Guy Burgess letter 1959 - he was one of the Cambridge spies
Hotel Mockba
Manezhnaya Square
Mockba
Christmas 1959
Dear,
I don’t really know why I bloody writing this as I won’t post it and even if I did it wouldn’t get past the censors. I trust you will get it eventually as I have asked Donald to hang on to all my ramblings and do something with them when I have finally succeeded in drinking myself to death, not that I am in his good books again despite his darling wifey and sprogs now being out here too.
God, you would not believe what a depressing fucking place Moscow is in December. They don’t celebrate Christmas, of course, the sky is grey, the buildings are grey, the slush is grey, the people are of the same hue inside and out and it is brass monkey cold. Sorry for this depressive outpouring but there are months where I feel sorry for myself and then there are months without an “r” in them, not that you can get oysters in the capital of the glorious Soyuz Soviet Socialist Republic.
I can’t believe it is eight years since Donald and I left England for the last time, meandered through France and Czechoslovakia to wind up here. I have heard that my going with him stirred up a ruckus and put poor Kim under suspicion but what to do? Kim was saying one thing but Yuri was insistent that, without me, Donald would wobble and crack and send us all down. I know he found leaving Melinda on his birthday a terrible wrench but she’s here now. He has gone completely native, working up the road in the Lubyanka and teaching the spooks in perfect Russian, whereas I hate their glottal tongue, it always sounds like they are arguing, so I just get Andrei to translate everything for me.
I hope Kim will find it in his heart to forgive me; after all I did recruit him and even interviewed him for the BBC about the Spanish Civil War. I have to say the way he got me out of America to tip off Donald was masterly – “Go and get into as much trouble as you can” he said, red rag to a bull. I think I was arrested three times in one day mainly for being drunk but they knew that my passenger was not a hitchhiker, for God sake he had his pants down to his knees. How is it that these distant memories are so clear and I have no ruddy clue what I did yesterday?
Andrei is a dear, sweet boy. Even though I know they are paying him, and the USSR is more like Victorian England “a love that dare not speak it’s name”, he acts like he cares and doesn’t seem repulsed by my increasingly bloated form.
Macmillan was over this year with his entourage, which made downtown Moscow look a bit like an Old Etonian re-union. I dined with Randolph Churchill up at the National overlooking the Kremlin and entrance to Red Square. I’m afraid my suit has seen better days, with a bit of darning here and there, and that actress (Coral what’s her name?) I met must have forgotten to pass on my measurements to my tailor. I think Randolph hoped that I would have renounced communism and become straight so the conversation was a bit strained. Even though this place is not exactly happy valley, everyone is treated more or less equally badly and the vodka is incredibly reasonable. I had to tell him that I would never lose the views I formed way back in the thirties with the Cambridge Apostles. Strange to think it is twenty-five years ago since I first visited Moscow. I don’t suppose they will give me a silver Ferris wheel trophy to mark the first time I passed out in Park Culture back then.
Anyway, if and when you read this have a drink on me
Yours truly,
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess
Manezhnaya Square
Mockba
Christmas 1959
Dear,
I don’t really know why I bloody writing this as I won’t post it and even if I did it wouldn’t get past the censors. I trust you will get it eventually as I have asked Donald to hang on to all my ramblings and do something with them when I have finally succeeded in drinking myself to death, not that I am in his good books again despite his darling wifey and sprogs now being out here too.
God, you would not believe what a depressing fucking place Moscow is in December. They don’t celebrate Christmas, of course, the sky is grey, the buildings are grey, the slush is grey, the people are of the same hue inside and out and it is brass monkey cold. Sorry for this depressive outpouring but there are months where I feel sorry for myself and then there are months without an “r” in them, not that you can get oysters in the capital of the glorious Soyuz Soviet Socialist Republic.
I can’t believe it is eight years since Donald and I left England for the last time, meandered through France and Czechoslovakia to wind up here. I have heard that my going with him stirred up a ruckus and put poor Kim under suspicion but what to do? Kim was saying one thing but Yuri was insistent that, without me, Donald would wobble and crack and send us all down. I know he found leaving Melinda on his birthday a terrible wrench but she’s here now. He has gone completely native, working up the road in the Lubyanka and teaching the spooks in perfect Russian, whereas I hate their glottal tongue, it always sounds like they are arguing, so I just get Andrei to translate everything for me.
I hope Kim will find it in his heart to forgive me; after all I did recruit him and even interviewed him for the BBC about the Spanish Civil War. I have to say the way he got me out of America to tip off Donald was masterly – “Go and get into as much trouble as you can” he said, red rag to a bull. I think I was arrested three times in one day mainly for being drunk but they knew that my passenger was not a hitchhiker, for God sake he had his pants down to his knees. How is it that these distant memories are so clear and I have no ruddy clue what I did yesterday?
Andrei is a dear, sweet boy. Even though I know they are paying him, and the USSR is more like Victorian England “a love that dare not speak it’s name”, he acts like he cares and doesn’t seem repulsed by my increasingly bloated form.
Macmillan was over this year with his entourage, which made downtown Moscow look a bit like an Old Etonian re-union. I dined with Randolph Churchill up at the National overlooking the Kremlin and entrance to Red Square. I’m afraid my suit has seen better days, with a bit of darning here and there, and that actress (Coral what’s her name?) I met must have forgotten to pass on my measurements to my tailor. I think Randolph hoped that I would have renounced communism and become straight so the conversation was a bit strained. Even though this place is not exactly happy valley, everyone is treated more or less equally badly and the vodka is incredibly reasonable. I had to tell him that I would never lose the views I formed way back in the thirties with the Cambridge Apostles. Strange to think it is twenty-five years ago since I first visited Moscow. I don’t suppose they will give me a silver Ferris wheel trophy to mark the first time I passed out in Park Culture back then.
Anyway, if and when you read this have a drink on me
Yours truly,
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess
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