The Tale of an Old Sheepskin Coat
Major-General Richard Hilton served as British Military Attaché to the Soviet Union for some years following the the Second World War, and later recounted his various escapades and experiences in Military Attaché in Moscow (https://wylfings.com/military-attache-in-moscow). Presented here is but one of the accounts he provides. The featured painting accompanying this extract is 'Moscow. Red Square' by Kandinsky, painted in 1916; an avant-garde work painted during the course of the Great War, perhaps adequately showcasing the convulsion of modernity which permeated the 20th century.
This episode, which earned for me a brief and entirely unnecessary publicity in the press of the world, was the first attempt of the authorities to intimidate me (and any other foreigners of similar recreational tastes) from wandering off the beaten track and seeing too much of social conditions behind the scenes. The absurdity of M.V.D.1 tactics is enhanced by the fact that on this particular occasion, far from being engaged in a walk through some remote country district, I was on a public thoroughfare in one of the suburbs of Moscow! Ever since the unpleasant affair of the concentration camp, I had been rather too deeply impressed by that experience to venture far afield again. On the particular occasion now to be described, I had just walked through the ‘Gorki Park of Culture and Rest’2, one of the most public and open places in Moscow, and had just crossed the river by the public foot-bridge. The alleged ‘photography’, which formed the basis of this concocted incident, was said by the Russians to have taken place on this public footpath, and within full view of the sentry guarding the bridge over the river. It was hardly a likely place for clandestine photography!
After crossing the bridge I paused for a moment to look at the Lenin Hills3, because I had been told that they were quite a good place for ski-ing. The public footpath here ran along the top of a railway embankment. There were crowds of other people walking along it and there was considerable traffic, mainly also pedestrian, on the roads just under the embankment. It was, in fact, about as public a place as could be found in one of Moscow’s most public and ordinary suburbs. To the west of the embankment the river made a big loop along the foot of the Lenin Hills. In the loop of the river there was the usual untidy area of wood piles and semi-derelict buildings which were typical of the suburbs as a whole.
I had hardly started walking on again when a man stopped me and asked who I was and where I was going. The man’s general demeanour was abrupt and offensive, so I enquired by what legal authority he spoke. He showed me some sort of a badge in the form of a large red star, which I accepted as being a genuine mark of officialdom. I therefore produced my identity card, whereupon the man snatched it from my hand and made off.
As it is both illegal and unsafe to go about Moscow without identity papers, I hurried after him, demanding the return of my card. He entered a small office and grabbed a telephone, at the same time signalling me to take a seat. Not knowing what was going on, I sat down and listened to his talk on the telephone, which was to the effect that ‘I have got him here. Please come along here quickly’. Having finished telephoning he turned very politely to me and said that someone wanted to speak to me. Would I kindly wait a moment?
A few minutes later in came a lieutenant-colonel of the railway service. He started in the blustering manner which seems typical of minor Soviet officials. Marching up to me he shouted: ‘Where is your camera? Give it up to me.’
It seemed necessary to take this jack-in-office down a peg or two, so I asked him whether his companion, the plainclothes man, had told him who I was, and whether that was the way in which Russian officers were taught to address senior officers of a foreign army that had recently fought as an ally of the U.S.S.R. This had the desired effect. He had the grace to apologize, and continued in a polite and respectful tone.
He then explained that someone had just reported having seen me taking photographs of a factory. I was still ignorant of the wiles of Soviet officialdom, so my immediate reaction was to assume that some foolish mistake had been made.
‘That is easily disproved,’ I told him. ‘Please search me at once to see if I have got a camera.’ But the plotters had already thought of this simple answer, and were prepared for it.
‘Oh no,’ he replied at once. ‘We cannot do that. You see, you have a diplomatic pass, and diplomats are immune from search.’ ‘Very well,’ said I. ‘If diplomats are people entitled to so much respect, they must also be people whose word can be trusted. Either you take my word that I have no camera, or you may search me here and now. You cannot have it both ways.’
But Soviet officials are people who like to have it both ways. He still refused, and instead invited me to step across the road to the office of the factory, whose photograph I was said to have taken, in order to have a word with the director.
Still believing this to be merely a stupid mistake, and hoping that the director might prove to be a man of more common-sense than this uneducated officer, I accompanied him to the factory, which turned out to be the untidy group of semi-derelict buildings to which I have referred earlier. In the director’s office we found the director himself, a youngish man with the air of a ‘party member’, and about ten other men sitting round the walls. The director greeted me politely enough and explained that all these men were the witnesses, who had seen the act of photography taking place. He invited me to take a chair and listen to their statements.
Once again I pointed out that it was quite unnecessary to waste time in that way, because I was perfectly willing to waive any diplomatic immunity and would agree then and there to be searched in order to settle the matter. But the director knew the right answer to that too. Producing a long piece of paper which he called an ‘Act’ he proceeded to read out a series of statements alleged to have been made by each of the men present. At the end of each statement he referred to one of these men for verification of the fact that this was his statement.
By now a strong suspicion was beginning to dawn upon me that this was no mere stupidity, born of the prevalent suspicion and spy mania of Soviet petty officialdom, but a deliberately pre-arranged trick. The telephone conversation of the first man who had stopped me and his remark, ‘I have got him here’, and the readiness with which both lieutenant-colonel and factory-director had parried my offer to be searched—these things had already begun to arouse my suspicions. The production of this written ‘act’ by the director now confirmed my suspicions. There would have been no time for all these people to give their evidence to the director, and have it all written down, between the time I had halted for a moment on the embankment and my arrival in the director’s office. Besides, what would have been the point in taking down all the evidence in writing before my arrival? The natural procedure would surely have been to wait till I arrived, so that I could be given an opportunity of hearing each witness giving his own testimony. I realized that something deep and dirty was afoot.
Accordingly I interrupted the director, after he had read a couple of these ‘statements’, to point out to him that, although I had a fair knowledge of Russian, it was not in keeping with normal standards of equity to conduct what was now amounting to a serious accusation against some person in a language which that person could only partially understand. I demanded that before we proceeded any further, an interpreter should be summoned. I also demanded that a telephone call should be put through either to the British Embassy4 or to General Seraev’s office. None of these requests was granted, the excuse in each case being the favourite Soviet pretext of ‘technical difficulties’. Telephonic communication with the centre of Moscow had suddenly become unaccountably bad, and they regretted that there was nobody in reach who spoke any English at all.
When the director had finished the solemn farce of reading the ‘statements’ to the ‘witnesses’ and asking each in turn if he agreed with the evidence, he passed the ‘act’ over to me and invited me to sign it! I could scarcely credit the naive effrontery of the man. Naturally I refused to do anything of the kind.
The director seemed genuinely surprised at this, and for some time continued to try to persuade me that it was ‘merely a matter of form’, which would not in any way imply my admission of any part of the statement. When he finally realized that I was not fool enough to be taken in, he suddenly stood up and handed me back my identity card.
‘Then there is no more to be said. Good day.’
But now it was my turn. I pointed out to him that much of my time had been wasted without any justification. I did not now intend to leave his office till he had got a telephone call through to General Seraev’s office. I intended to wait there till General Seraev himself or one of his staff officers came there with a car to take me back to my flat.
The director probably began now to wish that he had got a telephone call through when my request was first made, for it was about an hour and a half more before a staff officer and a car could be summoned. During this time I sat in his office, and must considerably have dislocated and delayed the normal work of the office. At last Captain Pasko, a naval officer on General Seraev’s staff, arrived in a car.
For the third time I made the request that Captain Pasko, as one authorized to deal with foreign attachés, should search me in order to disprove the existence of a camera. He made the same reply as the other two. I then demanded that he should drive me straight to General Seraev so that I could explain the matter to him and prove to his satisfaction that the whole story was without foundation. Pasko agreed to this, but, no sooner were we on the way in the car than he told me that General Seraev was out of Moscow, and could not therefore be visited that evening.
1. МВД (Министерство внутренних дел), the abbreviation typically pronounced /ɛm vɛ ˈdɛ /, whilst the full name in standard pronunciation would be articulated thus — / mʲɪnʲɪˈsʲtʲerstvə ˈvnutrʲɪnʲ(ː)ɪɣ dʲeɫ /; the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and present-day Russian Federation.
2. A large park in central Moscow, named in honour of the Soviet author Maxim Gorky and first opened in 1928. The official site can be found here: https://parkgorkogo.ru/
3. Originally and nowadays called the Sparrow Hills
4. Perhaps of note, this was the first diplomatic mission by a foreign power following the conclusion of the Russian Civil War, with the British government being the first to recognise Soviet authority in 1924. The original embassy from this time period (and certainly Hilton's appointment) — a late 19th century manor overlooking the Moscow River — is now used as the ambassador's residence, whilst a new, modern building has been used as the official embassy since 2000.
For further information concerning the oil painting, please see: https://my.tretyakov.ru/app/masterpiece/11026?lang=en