Roy Medvedev, author and member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, twin brother of biologist Zhores Medvedev, died yesterday in Moscow at the age of 100. (Russians report people’s ages as “in their 101st” year so sometimes it appears as if they are older by a year.) He is most famous to many of us as the author of Let History Judge.

I never met him. Nor his brother. His brother was a political prisoner for a time, forcibly interned in a psychiatric hospital for his dissent and samizdat writings. Roy was not. Make of you will of the AI friend’s take on the reasons for this:

The reason I didn’t meet him — even though I was supposed to — and the reason he was chosen to visit rather than others — was related to his socialist stance that advocated reform rather than peaceful replacement or even overthrow of the Soviet government. And indeed he was viewed as less threatening.

So in the 1980s, when American publishers decided to return to the Moscow Book Fair they had boycotted — and even created an alternative for in New York one year, with exiles — I came along with the delegation. I often attended meetings of the Association of American Publishers as a notetaker and reporter on the status of the writers who were prisoners of conscience — the overwhelming number of them came from the USSR and Eastern Europe. That was in part because Robert Bernstein, the head of Random House and also the head of Human Rights Watch and publisher of Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents, wanted publishers to visit dissident writers, former political prisoners, along with the formal book fair activities.

I actually can’t remember Bob in Moscow that time (although I can another time) but what I do remember is some other publishers deciding they wanted to visit Medvedev – precisely because he was demonstrably “safe” as a kind of in-house critic — and were still wary of doing anything that might get them expelled and their visas cancelled.

There was a scene that has been imprinted on my memory from that trip — and a massive effort by my colleagues at HRW and I to buy all kinds of electronics, and to take all kinds of gifts from emigres who were unable to return yet — and seed them throughout the delegation to enable us to bring them in. A tape recorder was invaluable to people in the dissident movement for their work — and if nothing else, they could sell it in the commission store and feed their family for months. Certain OTC medicines were impossible to find; certain kinds of clothing. This was the Soviet Union! So one emigre (I no longer remember who but I believe it was an emigre family knew) wanted to get a pair of men’s shoes to a relative there. He brought me a large-sized pair of cheap loafers, imitation leather, nothing grand, probably purchased at PayLess. I asked one of the tall publishers who could have plausibly worn those shoes to put them in his luggage and then give them to me in the hotel later — after we got through customs.

He picked up the shoes distastefully and asked why we were bringing such tacky footwear abroad. I said that was what the emigre could afford, and that his relative would appreciate it all the same, as even something that shoddy would not be available in a country infamous for turning out reams of left-foot shoes in a factory forcing everyone to wait or struggle to find the right one elsewhere.

Multiple that incident, and you have the problem with this delegation, which at one point involved me spending a day with an elderly wealthy woman who was a donor of HRW who slipped on the shoddy floor of the Book Fair — in decidedly *non*-shoddy shoes — and broke her arm. I had to struggle to find a car, find a hospital to take us, clear this through officials, sit in a waiting room, where finally, a showboat of a doctor, star-struck that he was going to wait on foreigners and expecting a big tip in dollars, made us wait further as he dramatically told us the plot of Diamond Hand — Brilliantovaya Ruka — a Soviet comedy about a man who hid diamonds in the cast of his broken arm.

He proceded to mix up a staggeringly heavy, soggy brew of plaster — old-fashioned – style — and begin to glob it on to my colleague’s arm. She sat there in pain and shock. This cast weighed a ton, remained sopping wet, and the sling wrapped around it stuck to the plaster. In a kind of daze, I took her to the hotel, and in a state of sleep-deprived desperation, we managed to get her ticket changed and get her on a plane back to New York. There, her stunned doctor had to first saw this monstrosity of her arm before he could straighten her arm, and then get her into a more modern and lightweight cast.

This was the Book Fair. Oh, yes,. there were books, too, I will circle back on that later.

So…I was annoyed by this decision to have the principals meet only the “safe” dissident but had to go along with it because these people were my seniors in age, in profile, in job position, and I was basically “the help,” doing logistics and translation although I had the title of “research director” of the original Watch — Helsinki Watch before other “Watches” were spawned and then the collection renamed “Human Rights Watch”.

I made an appointment to meet my collegue at 8:00 am in the hotel to make the trek to Medvedev’s house with some other people, and to get back around 10 am at the lastest to be there on the floor for the book fair, which ran about a week as I recall, and was a demanding gig.

Finally, because of people fearing to “get into trouble,” and also feeling uncomfortable with a long trek from where we were, to meet only the *wife of* a dissident writer — not the writer himself, I found myself all alone when it came time to visit Lev Timofeyev, author of The Peasant’s Art of Starving.

We were at the Hotel Cosmos, whose name I always felt described how far away we were from the center, because it is near the VDNKh, the national exhibit space, a work of Soviet giantism involving a large park and various Brutalist buildings and temporary exhibit structures.

I seem to recall getting away from the day’s activities at the Book Fair somewhat late, and then having to take several metros out to Yugo-Zapadnaya, the station near the large Soviet housing project for scientists and scholars where Timofeyev, an economist, had lived with his wife. His wife had not contacted foreigners much — I had never met her before — and she was understandably fearful herself and even distraught at now drawing attention to herself again — after Lev’s trial and jail sentence in 1986, when perestroika and glasnost were supposed to be underway, and when things were looking brighter for books and even dissent — hence the restoration of the Book Fair, once boycotted.

In fact, I think Timofeyev’s arrest was really inconvenient for everyone, Soviets and Americans, and naturally there was efforts even on both sides to try to decouple his case from anything to do with international relations, and even to second-guess whether it was really a freedom of expression case — although of course it was. His book is seminal, and had both a trenchant and well-researched monograph on how people living under desperate shortages and poverty in the USSR managed to survive with their kitchen gardens — while their collective farms never succeeded in transforming the country, let alone the world. It had an afterward written by Timofeyev’s son, which was really the first good essay I recall on the problem of the black market and the mafia — which the rest of the world was late in catching up to, believing that communism eradicated crime, one way or another. Lev then later wrote a book about the mafia which I translated and which was published by Random House.

My schedule was so packed that I remember trying to also set up along the way a meeting with two people from the independent peace group called the Moscow Trust Group, Vladimir Brodsky and Nikolai Khramov — and I thought possibly it wouldn’t hurt them to meet someone perhaps not in their circle — although Brodsky was a physician and I believe he lived in that Yugo-Zapadnaya neighbourhood as well.

But then it turned out yet another friend of ours, someone who quietly made the rounds of families of political prisoners and got their information for Bulletin V, the sucessor to the Chronicle of Current Events, crushed by a series of arrests and exiles, already knew Timofeyev’s wife, so there was a link of sorts.

In any event I went up the elevator in a tall building, met Timofeyev’s wife, and sat for a tense and troubled hour trying to take down as much information as I could, and then all of a sudden Brodsky appeared (or perhaps it was Khramov) and informed us that he had barely got past the “cordon” below, that the building was surrounded by the KGB.

Well, that was nasty and unsettling and of course meant that I or he had been followed — or both — not surprising given my past visits to dissidents and his own activities — again, even though things were now supposed to be “better” in 1986. I remember looking out the window, and with a sinking heart, seeing the black cars and men in leather jackets milling around — it wasn’t the first time I saw that kind of scene — in fact I remember the VERY first time, when I was highly unsettled, but the people I was visiting were unperturbed and kept on with their meeting, exchanging information about issues and cases of political prisoners.

So now I wondered about going to our NEXT meeting, which was to be with the Trust Group members. We sat there even longer, thinking that if we trouped out with the obvious foreigner — me — we’d be shining a flashlight even more than might be on us because Brodsky/Khramov decided to contact Timofeyev’s wife. (I’m not sure they know each other even to this day.) A reason I’m publishing this draft now is to see if they remember any of this, but for them it would be “Tuesday” and perhaps not stand out.

We dawdled around, it got dark, it got to be way after 6 pm when there was a theory that even KGB agents have to go home to dinner or change shifts, and then finally they DID disappear. Maybe one of them was left behind discretely, but the visible presence — that signalled that we might be stopped, examined, even detained (that happened to me another time at Novodvorskaya’s house) — that “messaging” was over.

So we went downstairs, the coast appeared to be clear, and they told me they wanted me to come and interview a man who had “served his international duty” abroad. This was code word usually for serving in Afghanistan. This would be a remarkable interview, if true, as we could get a first-hand authentic account from a soldier fighting in Afghanistan much later. The carefully-curated articles leaked out in actually manipulated fashion by Genrikh Borovik, son of the head of the Soviet Peace Committee had begun to appear by then, and in fact made up a special report from Life magazine edited by David Friend. I had even worked on the piece with Ludmila Thorne, his main source on the Soviet POWs in Afghan, an issue she avidly followed (and even went to the region to investigate). Remind me to circle back later some day with my Borovik story.

That night back at of the Book Fair, we went some place very far away у чёрта на куличках — to the middle of nowhere — again to some Soviet housing complex where everything looked alike. We got to an apartment where the family of this young man with his “international duty” was on leave and it turned out…his international duty was fulfilled in…Yemen.

Even so, that was interesting, we talked but of course I couldn’t use that anywhere as no one cared then about the Russian involvement in Yemen — and frankly STILL don’t.

I then heard more reports from the Trust Group members who had gathered at this meeting, including Sasha Rubchenko, a tall man with long hair and a “hippie” of sorts and pacifist, who limped because he had suffered tuberculosis in this country that despite being a socialist worker’s paradise had awful medical care.

By this time, it was in the wee hours of the morning, and I began to despair how I could get back across the whole of Moscow to my hotel that was also out on the devil’s swampland — to translate the idiom literally. We looked out the window — not a car in sight that might be serving as an informal taxi which might be persuaded to go to the Cosmos. There was always the problem of offering American dollars in a situation like this — it could lead to both the American tourist and the Russian being arrested for black market activity. I had rubles, but wasn’t sure if they would be enough — in any event, we decided to wait just a few more hours until daylight before attempting to get a cab in the morning rush hour.

The others dispersed to make their way home, some said they’d sleep on the floor, and Rubchenko, ever the gentleman, suggested I rest on the sofa, and he would sleep in the bathtub. This bathtub trick I learned from Russians served me well even on trips such as to London, where a bunch of NGOs might have to cram into a hotel room or someone would stay late past the metro closing hour — and you could sleep in the tub — which isn’t actually as bad as it sounds.

I don’t think I shut my eyes for long as I was very worried about getting back to the hotel, knowing how we had the meeting with Medvedev! The situation was still of the type that I couldn’t call from anyone’s house and say “Hi, I’m delayed, go without me tomorrow” — with risking that now my hosts — related to a young soldier — had a phone call to a foreign hotel along with a visit from a foreigner, possibly shadowed, to boot.

Finally as it grew light, we went out and it must have taken an hour or more to try to flag a car down on the big prospect, and convince them to drive all the way to the Cosmos — because we were far from the subway, and taking two or three subway lines back out there was going to take forever.

By the time I got back to the hotel, it was past 9 am — and my colleagues had left without me. Or perhaps never went? But not before they asked the dezhurnaya or the floor watchers who reported on you to the KGB in those days if I had returned last night. In fact, they had a system where every time you went out, you signed the book with your name and date and room number, and when you returned, you signed the book with your name and date and room number. Awful! That was unfortunate, because that then alerted the goons to start looking for me. I rushed to the book fair site, and found that everyone was worried that I had been arrested and even angry with me for not reaching them — but frankly, I couldn’t care about this now that they had alerted the police to my “misadventures” and set me up for an interrogation — that could then affect the people I had met. I don’t recall if they in fact visited Medvedev — I believe they did and I hope they were satisifed then that they met at least one dissident — a safe one.

Meanwhile, they had inadvertantly and with good intentions caused me grievance.

In retrospect in seems appalling that no big American publisher could have made that trip with me to see a jailed writer’s wife. They could have hired a chauffeur from Intourist demonstrably — but that was the exigencies of the day, for all kinds of reasons. Why is it me, trying to go out to interview peace activists and people fulfilling their international duties — and not reporters from established newspapers? There are a lot of reasons for this, I could describe in another post.

So as I was struggling to explain why I couldn’t call them and why I was late, a security official from the fair summoned me and then of course I was interrogated. Where had I been? Why hadn’t I slept in my room? Whom did I meet?

I gave as little information as possible. I said I had gone to Moscow State University to meet an American friend studying there and the time got away from me and then the subway closed and I couldn’t find a cab.

I wasn’t born yesterday.

This story may not have satisfied them — but in fact there had been a point where I did make contact with such a friend at MGU during that day so it was plausible and had they been following me — they’d know that. In any event, I realized that now as they waited for some OTHER official to come to interrogate — was the perfect time to beg to go to the ladies’ room because…

….in my purse was an original letter from Andrei Sakharov which I had from ANOTHER meeting I’ll describe another day. Long experience in Russia and coming back and forth visiting dissidents, which I began to do in 1981, had taught me that you do NOT leave things in your room. Then they will be confiscated. I even once had them grab a report I had from the Crimean Tatars — then apparently copy it — and put it back! I felt awful when I saw the bulky report of the persecution they suffered — in a crumpled red cardboard cover with string — missing from the drawer where I had stored it. Then it was back the next day! That’s how they are.

So there I was with a rather ragged cover story — which I had the sense they couldn’t undermine because somebody may not *sufficiently* followed me. You know how you get those funny spider senses? They had ALL THESE FOREIGNERS to follow and probably were all working overtime. Still, I didn’t want to test it, went to the lavatory, hastily created a coded version of the letter scattered throughout my notebook which began “Dear Grandma…” Then I had to destroy the original — which just about killed me. I might have gotten it out had this exposure not happened or at least into safer hands which was the original plan. Instead, after memorizing it, I had to not burn it — never do that, as it creates smoke and fire and questions — but rub it out with water. Make the pages completely clean, and turn them into tiny wads, then flush them down the toilet — being careful to note whether they come back up again in those crappy Soviet toilets.

I returned to puzzled looks at why I had been so long in the lav, then answered more questions about my activities, and then I was asked to write out an Obyasnitel’noye, an explanatory statement about my identity, my visa status, who I had met, etc. I put a fictional name for the American friend because I thought I’ll be gone by the time they checked it. After all, they had bigger fish to fry with the entire Book Fair itself and its numerous foreigners and Soviets meeting foreigners and probably intelligence from both sides.

I then dejectedly finished my duties at the book fair and trudged back to the hotel to try to prepare for my next meeting — which now that I was lit up like Yankee Stadium — would have to be cancelled — and again, not by phone — because of the obvious tails on me now — men AND women — I guess they realized they had to lay on some women footpadders to go into the bathroom with me.

This was discouraging, but with several goons trailing behind me, I got on the subway. I tried the trick of unexpectedly getting off, then getting on again quickly — but then I found I had new tails plus one old one who did the same thing as me farther down. As Ed Kline always taught, “They are professionals, we are amateurs.”

Then I got back on the train and reached the statement where I was to meet the parents of Alexander Melamid, of the artists’ duo Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, whom I had visited before, and was to visit again to deliver letters and a present. His parents had previously invited me to their house for tea and refreshments to hear how their son was doing, as he was unable to return to the Soviet Union then — and they were not allowed to leave.

I’ll never forget this awful, seering moment as the metro doors opened and the recorded voice began speaking and I saw them standing right on the platform right in front of that door as it happened — “at the last wagons.”

Daniil Yefimovich Melamid was a specialist on Nazi Germany who was forced to use a pseudonym because in fact the Soviet bosses were antisemitic —“Mel’nikov”. He was a short man wearing a typically long Soviet overcoat and hat. He and his wife beamed at me in joyful expectation that they were about to hear news from their son and even get a letter. Their faces crumpled into sorrow as I rushed up to them, thrusting the package and letter into their hands, and whispered:

“I’m very sorry, but I can’t meet with you. I’m being followed. I’ve been questioned already by the police at the Book Fair, I can’t really drag this allong with me to your house.”

I was very concerned about harming them in any way — yes they had a dissident artist son — but they weren’t involved with political prisoners, a jailed economist and author, young men who dodged the draft and held pacifist demonstrations — etc. — even if they might have supported them. You just didn’t cross pollinate your contacts in this way.

It wasn’t ideal –having to drag my tail and hand them the letters in another spotlight — but possibly, if they had orders only to follow me, and not that elderly couple, they might back off — or if they saw it was just a letter to people who had a son in America — they might not care. You don’t know how skillful and how malicious they are as it can vary. But sitting at their house an entire evening, as other relatives or friends came, as they gathered the ring with the black cars all around to watch everyone — why?

This was my train of thought, as this neatly dressed KGB woman a few paces away on the subway car stared at me. I didn’t have to speak much longer in explanation — the Melamids turned and scurried out of the subway — and I never saw them again. Daniil Yefimovich died in 1993 — I believe after finally seeing his son and family again. I felt just awful at the time, however.

So I crossed the platform and took the opposite train back to the Cosmos, with the tail not far behind.

When I left early the next day to leave plenty of time for the inveitable shakedown at the airport, it was fortunate because every suitcase and purse and bag was overturned and every scrap of paper copied. Even an address book that was an ordinary one of people in New York, I was using to send postcards that didn’t have any Soviet contacts in it, served as fodder for further interrogation. An ordinary American friend, unrelated to Russia, who happened to have the name “Ivan” got a special question from the border guard: who was he? Was he from Russia? Why was he in my address book?

Fortunately, they did not take the draft of the letter I had started to “Grandma” but of course the Sakharov family was disappointed without the original — which they actually needed for a big magazine article they were planning to attract attention to Sakharov case — he was still in Gorky then! As it happened, they were of course past masters at all this — another copy of the letter was already received and smuggled out by someone else with less of a profile. And yet a third, as a back-up.

This entire escapade cost me my visa, however. Then next time I applied, I was denied. And that persisted until 1988, when Abe Rosenthal of the New York Times insisted I be given a visa to accompany him to Perm Labor Camp No. 35 — or he would not make the trip and would keep declaring that they were holding political prisoners still. (A story for another day).

Roy Medvedev made very important contributions to Soviet history. He was entitled to his socialist views which I don’t share. Roy had lots of visitors from the left, such as Steve Cohen and Katrina Vanden Heuvel — they would not visit other types of dissidents they felt were dangerous and would lead to visa denials. No doubt they and other colleagues of mine at the Book Fair would strenously deny that they took the safe course.

I felt that we had to visit Timofeyev’s wife, to try to be part of what might get him out of labour camp finally — and that his story and book needed more coverage. I don’t regret for a minute making the visit to his wife — then making the visit to the Trust Group members, even if their friend’s “international duty” was in Yemen — because they had their own stories to tell me. Perhaps I should have braved the tails more and gone to the Melamids’ home, but the thought of another evening while we looked out the window at black cars, and then ran the gauntlet of them possibly detaining us or worse — I felt these elderly people should not be subjected to that. Still, their stricken faces haunt me.

I hope the imitation leather shoes fit.