In 1988 I sent my mother June Marsh to the Soviet Union. She did, actually, want to go, as did her friend Marguerite – but she was reluctant to leave my father who had recently had an operation. I promised to look after my father, and in late September she and M were duly despatched into the warm embrace of Intourist and Aeroflot.
The two of them could never be trusted to behave themselves on foreign trips, so I was not surprised to hear on their return in early October that they had skipped several mandatory visits to worthy sights, in order – they hoped – to root around in shops and have a good meal or two. However, the only shop they found was the massive GUM with its equally massive queues, and they had all but one of their attempts to eat in a restaurant thwarted by an official hand across the door and the single word, “Delegatsii”. The delegatsii had also occupied all the hotels in Moscow, so my mother and M were put up on a boat outside the capital for the duration. They didn’t seem to get much food.
Apart from the problems caused by the delegatsii, however, they had a suitably jaw-dropping time stomping around Red Square, visiting Lenin (who was in) and watching the Bolshoi ballet. They didn’t take enough photos because no-one ever did in those days. They never stopped talking or laughing about that trip.
A year later, my mother was in a shop in Newcastle when she spotted a book entitled “Russian in a Week” and idly flicked through it. On page 24 she saw something familiar – a photograph of her and Marguerite in Moscow, gazing glumly at a teaplate-sized meal.
And what of the delegatsii? Oh, it turned out to be nothing much. Just the extraordinary meeting of the Supreme Soviet at which Andrey Gromyko was eased out of the then largely ceremonial role of president, to be replaced in due course by that reformist Communist Party general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Dr Vivien Marsh is a London-based writer and journalist.
Vivien (right) with her mother June on a visit to France in 1986.
