Dear mom and dad,

How are you both? I hope you are well and in good spirits. I haven't worked out what your movement's will be. Mom's staying on in Zimbabwe for six months and you are going back to South Africa, Dad to edit Africa South and East.

You didn't manage to phone through on New Year's day and so I think I can correctly assume that neither phone system, yours or ours, was working.

I am looking at a world map I bought which covers an entire wall and distance is meaningless. I could be up in Harare one day, the map reassures me.

Teresita, my darling, is due in 2 week, but the 2 weeks stretch out before me endlessly. I worry because, again, I look at the map and the Journey from Mexico City to Moscow is very long. But you will be relieved to know that I have nearly everything organised for her. I fly to Moscow a day early, I get to the airport the next day by bus, and the Council will ferry us from one airport to the other.

Then poor Teresita puts up with another two hours in the air and after we arrive she can sleep for as long as she wants to to recover. I am happy she is with her family, but I think she misses me a lot and boy do I miss her. How can I put it. The situation here is not all that bad. Web have the minimum. i.e.

We have a large room each, a telephone, a washing machine, a TV and a network of flatmates and friends who support each other. Everyone is capable of irritating everyone else, but by and large we get along.

The people responsible for causing the trouble here [There was a riot] were expelled. We share the building with students which would be a rather wild experience anywhere.

In a way we are treated very well despite the problems. A young American friend from Hawaii was moaning that he felt deceived by his boss: a very nice woman who was a UNESCO fellow, Irina Mihailovna:

...

I was so happy that Teresita managed to meet John and Nola [John Hall, my grandfather, died a few months after we met up.] so impressed by his dignity and as we left I saw him through the window and I felt very sad. Teresa said to me: "Cry if you feel like it." Dad, I hope you can cry if you feel like it. I worry. If it happened to me I would feel like the loneliest person in the world. Your Mom and Dad are the people you love most in the world. Of course I love Teresa and my new baby on the way, but your Mom and Dad somehow complete the universe.

Perhaps I am not too clear. Sometimes I feel such joy to be with Teresa and to share her with you, but I want to chat with you both and talk and share all your experiences and mine in a way that is less provocative than I often am.

That strange outburst about the Soviet Union. And you asked me why I was going there if I felt that way about it. If I felt so strongly that there were so many things wrong with it.

It's funny how when you rely on your intuition, you hit so many nails on the head - people agreeing with me. My perceptions matching theirs. The challenge is to become more rational and measured and not to simply blurt out whatever is in your head.

I have definitely committed some gigantic faux pas here in my time, but none of them malicious, I hope.

The state of things as I see them in the Soviet Union at the moment seems to be:

1. How to introduce a domestic market for consumer goods that isn't parasitic.
2. How to loosen the control of central power to an acceptable degree.
3. How to deal with the realities of economic integration, while seeking more economic independence at the level of the republics.
5. How to prevent opportunists from capitalising on nationalism and racism and great Russianism at this most vulnerable point in time. Because given time and effort and patience the window of opportunity for these people should shut.
6. How to maintain a political awareness based on ideologies that have a concrete basis in reality and how to keep up a critical, but constructive level of debate going in the Soviet Union.

And here you will find all the problems you see in Socialist or semi-socialist countries like Mexico, Cuba and Mozambique. Especially rampant corruption at all levels of society.

The KGB was asked to root out corruption by the Supreme Soviet. The inference is that the police force is corrupt here from nose to toes.

I was talking to one of my teachers on the teacher training course and she was complaining about the system and about how her generation was a lost generation with no moral and spiritual reference points and I said, rather cheekily:

"Look, what are you actually going to do about it. Do you want the Soviet Treaty [to stay in the Soviet Union] or not."

She paused and did a complete about face.

"Of course we want a treaty. The consequences of breaking up the Soviet Union wouldn't be worth contemplating."

The former socialist countries have nowhere to sell their products, but to each other and to the Soviet Union, unless they want to convert themselves into banana republics.

I point to Cuba on the map and tell them: "When Cuba thinks of capitalism it thinks of Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador. Those are capitalist countries." But here they can only conceive of capitalism as the USA and the metropolis. They can't see that a capitalist Soviet Union would be a kind of Brazil. A country of extreme inequalities.

The intelligentsia here are being, on the whole, rather irresponsible. Propaganda that we would not accept in England about the wonderful American way of life is believed implicitly here. They see the US as a wonderful country where everyone is rich.

These ideas in the intelligentsia are not progressive. They are patriotic, they believe in old fashioned values, they believe that a woman's place is in the home, in Russian and Ukrainian imperialism.

Anti-semitism is so strong here and it is tied in with nationalism. Talking to some of the people at my institute makes me feel physically ill. There was actually an attempted pogrom (in this day and age) in Dnepropetrovsk. People have been killed. I have seen instances of anti-semitism.

Many communists, as opposed to the communist rats who jumped onto the nationalist bandwagons, (lying about their faith in democracy as they do so), are demonstrating against the nationalist demonstrations and the idea of the break up of the Soviet Union and I am on their side.

Let me tell you who I have talked to:

• British Diplomats
• Soviet diplomats
• MPs
• West German communists
• Returning Ukrainian exiles
• Azerbaijanis
• Apathetic brainless students
• lecturers teachers and professors
• Administrators

The truth is that the intelligentsia here aspires to forming a future privileged professional class. But it is such a complicated problem. I have come to the decision that the right thing to do is just to choose the most constructive course of action. Not very clear I know, but I try. Watching the different Congresses in session is an interesting experience.

Poor old Vincent, the American student, came up to me and said:

"Phil, Moscow News is alarmist."

And I asked him.

"Vincent. Why do you say Moscow News is alarmist?"

"Because I am really alarmed," he said.

He's right. Moscow News is a rag. But it is an interesting rag. In fact most of what happens here is really only inside people's heads. We haven't really seen anything that bad. In terms of violence, compared to South Africa, the changeover is a picnic here.

Mom and Dad, please come. You will find it something really out of the norm. There is bad and good here. If you are still busy I will understand perfectly and will continue to write my diary for you to read. I wish I was with you both. What I can do is close that imaginative gap. It's not that difficult. It's easy. I can see you clearly.

Take care of yourselves and each other a lot and hugs and kisses.

Enjoy the last weeks in your lovely house together.

Take care, Phil X X