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、萧条、流放、希望和觉醒构成了20世纪俄罗斯历史的主旋律。在这段悲怆的历史背景下，作者欧文•马修斯（Owen Matthews）描述了家人同最冷酷无情的苏联当局和最自鸣得意的西方官僚展开的一段争斗历史。

在20世纪50年代，欧文的父亲茂文•马修斯正是最早获准留学苏联的英国毕业生之一。不过，这一留学生涯却改变了父亲茂文的人生。首先，茂文爱上了身体娇弱但聪明伶俐的柳德米拉。柳德米拉是一位曾在30年代遭受清洗运动迫害的俄共高级官员的女儿。其次，茂文对苏联国家安全委员会举动轻率。苏联国家安全委员会坚持要求马修斯为他们工作，但遭到拒绝。随后，苏联永久地把欧文•马修斯驱逐出境。柳德米拉屡次申请出国签证却屡遭拒绝。

在那几十年，克里姆林宫沉迷于创造世间天堂却引发了成千上万件司空见惯的人间悲剧。热恋情人分居两地可能就是最终结局。然而，事实并非如此。为使恋人能够来到英国，茂文•马修斯表现出了巨大的决心，进行了五年微不足道但却不屈不挠的抗争。茂文求助了任何一位能提供帮助的公众人物，烦扰了新闻媒体并激怒了那些认为如此麻烦琐事同外交部毫不相关的官员。他还周游欧洲设法游说前来访问的苏联权贵，甚至有两次从芬兰通过免签证入境旅行而悄悄溜入苏联与其相见。

在此期间，茂文每天有空时都会给柳德米拉写信，文笔简练却爱意绵绵。他小心翼翼地保留了书信复件和恋人的所有回复，深深沉湎于深受挫折的爱妻情怀(对自己衣食的操心对自己情人的爱心交织不清)。通过以上摘录，读者几乎可察觉到马修斯的相思之苦和毅力之坚。摘录还透露出这对鸳鸯的家人是如此的不幸——茂文的父亲因反对这一婚姻关系而疏远儿子，柳德米拉的父亲因客死古拉格 (劳动改造营总管理局)而永别爱女——以致双方似乎可如此恰好地相偎相依。

为情人柳德米拉而奔走呼告的活动却促使茂文的学术事业付之东流。茂文因担心得罪克里姆林宫没有出版自己的苏联社会学研究。他因过于冒然地游说一位访客前往牛津大学的一所学院被免去职务，随后茂文前往另一所其曾不屑一顾的大学执教。在莫斯科，柳德米拉因同敌对阵营的人员有段“风流韵事”而受人骚扰不断。

令人惊讶的是，受害者所付出的牺牲最终得到了补偿。在1969，为和一位刺探东西方国家情报的间谍互换，马修斯案和其他二对夫妇的问题一块得以解决。柳德米拉因此来到了英国。尽管忠贞不渝的情深伉俪在勉强维系着婚姻关系，但双方的婚姻后来仍被证明并不幸福。妻子柳德米拉并不适应英国式的生活，而羞涩、坚毅的茂文未能同那段艰苦岁月一样，表现出勇气和毅力来尽到作为丈夫的职责。

不过，作为一名莫斯科90年代传奇的荒诞作家和一位在当前值得尊敬的驻外记者，本书作者正是这一悲剧爱情的结晶。作者以自我嘲讽的笔调描述了自己那段不同寻常的亲身经历，既富有情感而又颇为专业，从一个恰当的角度叙述了亲生父母的真实故事。极少有书籍会如此详细地介绍俄国的当年和现状，以及简略论述其深远影响。