TERROR, stagnation, exile, hope and disillusion are the fabric of Russian history in the last century. These are also the backdrop for Owen Matthews’s poignant history of his family’s battle with Soviet bureaucracy at its most callous and Western officialdom at its most complacent.

His father Mervyn was one of the earliest British graduates allowed to study in Russia in the 1950s. This changed his life. First, he fell in love with Lyudmila, the frail, brainy daughter of a senior communist purged in the 1930s. Second, he flirted with the KGB. They insisted that he work for them. When he refused, he was expelled, permanently, from the Soviet Union. Lyudmila’s repeated applications for an exit visa were denied.

That could have been the end, among millions of other commonplace tragedies in the decades that the Kremlin devoted to creating paradise on earth. But it wasn’t. Showing great reserves of determination, Mervyn Matthews spent the next five years running a threadbare but relentless campaign to get Lyudmila to Britain. He buttonholed any public figure who could help, harassed the press and infuriated Foreign Office mandarins who regarded the whole affair as an irrelevant nuisance. He travelled round Europe to try to lobby visiting Soviet bigwigs, and even managed twice to slip into the Soviet Union on visa-free day trips from Finland to see her.

In between he wrote daily to Lyudmila in spare but affectionate prose. He carefully kept copies of his own letters and of her replies, which are steeped with frustrated uxoriousness (love mixed with fussing about his diet and clothes). Through these extracts the reader can almost smell the longing and the willpower. They also show how the couple’s unhappy families—Mervyn’s father is absent because he disliked his relations, Lyudmila’s because he died in the Gulag—made them seem to match each other so neatly.

The campaign for Lyudmila cost Mervyn his academic career. He did not publish his work on Soviet sociology for fear of offending the Kremlin. After lobbying a visitor to his Oxford college too brusquely, he was eased out and took a job at another university which he despised. In Moscow, Lyudmila was hounded for her love affair with someone from the enemy camp.

Astonishingly, the sacrifices were vindicated. In 1969 the Matthews case and that of two other couples were bundled up with an East-West spy swap. Lyudmila came to Britain. The marriage proved less than blissful, although it was saved by dogged loyalty on both sides. Lyudmila adapted poorly to English life; her shy, spartan husband’s grit in adversity proved greater than his husbandly capabilities.

But the marriage did produce the author, a legendary hellraiser in Moscow in the 1990s, and now a respectable foreign correspondent. The crisp and admirably self-deprecating vignettes of his own life, both emotional and professional, give his parents’ story a fitting perspective. Few books say so much about Russia then and now, and its effect on those it touches.

恐怖、蕭條、流放、希望和覺醒構成了20世紀俄羅斯歷史的主旋律。在這段悲愴的歷史背景下，作者歐文•馬修斯（Owen Matthews）描述了家人同最冷酷無情的蘇聯(lián)當局和最自鳴得意的西方官僚展開的一段爭斗歷史。

在20世紀50年代，歐文的父親茂文•馬修斯正是最早獲準留學蘇聯(lián)的英國畢業(yè)生之一。不過，這一留學生涯卻改變了父親茂文的人生。首先，茂文愛上了身體嬌弱但聰明伶俐的柳德米拉。柳德米拉是一位曾在30年代遭受清洗運動迫害的俄共高級官員的女兒。其次，茂文對蘇聯(lián)國家安全委員會舉動輕率。蘇聯(lián)國家安全委員會堅持要求馬修斯為他們工作，但遭到拒絕。隨后，蘇聯(lián)永久地把歐文•馬修斯驅逐出境。柳德米拉屢次申請出國簽證卻屢遭拒絕。

在那幾十年，克里姆林宮沉迷于創(chuàng)造世間天堂卻引發(fā)了成千上萬件司空見慣的人間悲劇。熱戀情人分居兩地可能就是最終結局。然而，事實并非如此。為使戀人能夠來到英國，茂文•馬修斯表現出了巨大的決心，進行了五年微不足道但卻不屈不撓的抗爭。茂文求助了任何一位能提供幫助的公眾人物，煩擾了新聞媒體并激怒了那些認為如此麻煩瑣事同外交部毫不相關的官員。他還周游歐洲設法游說前來訪問的蘇聯(lián)權貴，甚至有兩次從芬蘭通過免簽證入境旅行而悄悄溜入蘇聯(lián)與其相見。

在此期間，茂文每天有空時都會給柳德米拉寫信，文筆簡練卻愛意綿綿。他小心翼翼地保留了書信復件和戀人的所有回復，深深沉湎于深受挫折的愛妻情懷(對自己衣食的操心對自己情人的愛心交織不清)。通過以上摘錄，讀者幾乎可察覺到馬修斯的相思之苦和毅力之堅。摘錄還透露出這對鴛鴦的家人是如此的不幸——茂文的父親因反對這一婚姻關系而疏遠兒子，柳德米拉的父親因客死古拉格 (勞動改造營總管理局)而永別愛女——以致雙方似乎可如此恰好地相偎相依。

為情人柳德米拉而奔走呼告的活動卻促使茂文的學術事業(yè)付之東流。茂文因擔心得罪克里姆林宮沒有出版自己的蘇聯(lián)社會學研究。他因過于冒然地游說一位訪客前往牛津大學的一所學院被免去職務，隨后茂文前往另一所其曾不屑一顧的大學執(zhí)教。在莫斯科，柳德米拉因同敵對陣營的人員有段“風流韻事”而受人騷擾不斷。

令人驚訝的是，受害者所付出的犧牲最終得到了補償。在1969，為和一位刺探東西方國家情報的間諜互換，馬修斯案和其他二對夫婦的問題一塊得以解決。柳德米拉因此來到了英國。盡管忠貞不渝的情深伉儷在勉強維系著婚姻關系，但雙方的婚姻后來仍被證明并不幸福。妻子柳德米拉并不適應英國式的生活，而羞澀、堅毅的茂文未能同那段艱苦歲月一樣，表現出勇氣和毅力來盡到作為丈夫的職責。

不過，作為一名莫斯科90年代傳奇的荒誕作家和一位在當前值得尊敬的駐外記者，本書作者正是這一悲劇愛情的結晶。作者以自我嘲諷的筆調描述了自己那段不同尋常的親身經歷，既富有情感而又頗為專業(yè)，從一個恰當的角度敘述了親生父母的真實故事。極少有書籍會如此詳細地介紹俄國的當年和現狀，以及簡略論述其深遠影響。