Moscow Diary by Marjorie Farquharson

Author:Marjorie Farquharson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

THE LAST LAP: NOVEMBER 1991–MARCH 1992

Monday 18 November

British Airways lost my luggage, so I got home late. Had a bath and watched a slow tide of cockroaches crawling up the walls. The wild patterning of my wallpaper and the kitchen floor leapt out at me this time when I walked into the flat. Glad to find nothing had been stolen.

Tuesday 19 November

I’ve the feeling this will be a tough time and so am taking things softly-softly, in particular sleeping whenever I feel like it. In the morning I laid out my cockroach killer and fly poisons, and in the afternoon I shopped for food. It was twilight at 3.00pm and there was a crowd of dark shapes queuing outside the booze shop and outside the milk shop too. I was shocked by the prices at the market. A jar of smetana that was 15 roubles in January is now 70. A tiny chicken is 50. According to Izvestiya, Yeltsin is “freeing” retail prices and wages next. Piyasheva, who heads the Prices Committee, then plans to free wholesale prices and distribution prices all in the space of two months. It is quite frightening.

I took eggs to Irina and her mother in the evening, but someone slammed a metro door on them and they broke. Natalya Ivanovna said that previously they had not wanted to take part in the hurly-burly of the outside world, but now they had no idea how to. I have never seen her so depressed – no longer the statuesque, animated woman of previous meetings. They must be on a combined income of about 360 roubles (under £10). Their favourite sausage which was 11 roubles in January is now 150. On my way home an old man in the metro began criticising my boots and said they were fit for an eighty-year-old. He was a cobbler and wanted to see how my zips worked. I said they worked perfectly fine, thank you very much.

There is a very noticeable change even in the two and a half weeks I’ve been away. The inflation is disturbing and I would say the atmosphere is suppressed panic. I now wonder if Amnesty can develop here. It seems too much to expect of people.

Terry Waite was freed today, and Shevardnadze is once again USSR Foreign Minister.

Wednesday 20 November

I swept up the corpses of cockroaches and flies which are succumbing to my poisonous vapours, then spent the day answering letters. Nikolay was round and says his mum is still mixing with Marxist groups and is in the committee to keep Lenin in his tomb. To a Westerner it sounds like a mix-up of generations. She sent me some bread.

I collected my luggage from British Airways. Learned in the evening that Yelena had a daughter last night, so far anonymous, but bang on time.

Thursday 21 November

I’ve been hiding from the phone in case it was my landlord, but today he caught up with me and came round. To my very great surprise, however, I seem

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