冷战中的热恋

Russia
俄罗斯

Hot love in the cold war
冷战中的热恋

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.
恐怖、萧条、流放、希望和觉醒是20世纪俄罗斯历史的构成要素，也是欧文•马修斯家人同冷酷无情的苏联当局和无动于衷的西方官僚进行抗争的心酸历史背景。

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.
20世纪50年代，欧文的父亲默文•马修斯是最早获准留学苏联的英国毕业生之一。留学生涯改变了他的人生。首先，默文爱上了身体娇弱而聪明伶俐的柳德米拉。柳德米拉是一位在30年代遭受迫害的俄共高官的女儿。其次，默文并未慎重对待苏联国家安全委员会(克格勃)。因拒绝苏联国家安全委员会的工作要求，默文•马修斯被苏联永久驱逐出境。柳德米拉多次申请出国签证却遭拒绝。

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.
在那几十年，克里姆林宫致力于创造人间天堂而酿造了无数司空见惯的人间悲剧。这对恋人分居两地可能就是结局，但事实并非如此。为促使恋人来到英国，默文展现出储备已久的决心，进行5年不屈不挠的小人物式抗争。默文求助了任何能够相助的公众人物，烦扰了新闻媒体并激怒了外交官，他们认为整件事情属于不受理的麻烦。默文前往欧洲尝试游说那些出访的苏联权贵，甚至通过两次免签入境芬兰旅行而溜入苏联与其相见。

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.
在此期间，默文每天闲暇时会向柳德米拉写些充满柔情蜜意的书信。他小心翼翼地保留了书信复件以及回复，沉浸于受挫的爱妻情怀之中(对衣食的操心和对情人的爱心交织一起)。通过文中的摘录，读者几乎察觉到了默文的相思之苦和毅力之坚。摘录也描述了这对恋人家人的种种不幸——默文父亲因反对这桩婚姻而疏远儿子，柳德米拉的父亲死于古拉格集中营——双方看似门当户对。

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.
为柳德米拉而奔走呼告的活动却促使默文学术事业的付之东流。因担心得罪克里姆林宫，默文并未出版自己的苏联社会学研究。因过于冒然地游说牛津大学的一位访客，默文被免去职务，随后他在另一所不屑一顾的大学找了份工作。在莫斯科，柳德米拉因同敌营的人员有恋爱关系而受到不断骚扰。

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.
令人惊讶的是，受害者最终被证明无辜。1969年，默文•马修斯案同在东西方间谍互换中的其他二对夫妇的问题一并得到解决。柳德米拉来到了英国。尽管忠贞不渝地呵护对方，但双方的婚姻仍被证实并不完全幸福。妻子柳德米拉很难适应英国式的生活。羞涩、坚毅的默文在逆境中完全尽到了丈夫应尽的职责。

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.
不过，本书作者是一位在20世纪90年代莫斯科出了名的叛逆者，也是这一婚姻的结晶。现在，他是一位可敬的驻外记者。作者以自我嘲讽的笔调描述了那段不同寻常的生活，既富有深情又颇为专业，从客观的角度叙述了亲生父母的故事。很少有此类书籍如此详细地介绍俄国的当年和现状，以及所述故事带来的影响。

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