LETTERS Well informed
Sir: In the Diary of 3 January, Simon Sebag Montefiore ridicules a recent British ambassador to the Soviet Union for failing to foresee the end of the Union. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr Montefiore that the ambassador might not have wished to reveal his real opinion to a member of the public, let alone a member of the press. Indeed, the ambassador might have seen advantage in putting it about that he did not foresee the end of the Soviet Union. I passed through Moscow as a member of the Diplomatic Service in late 1990 and dis- cussed the future of the Union with the British ambassador, who may have been Montefiore's interlocutor. To me, the ambassador forecast subsequent events with considerable accuracy and we can safely assume that he was advising the sec- retary of state in the same sense.
The alternative explanation of Mr Mon- tefiore's story is that he made it up, for the sake of the Diary; but I do not jump to that conclusion.
Peter Wallis
Parsonage Farm, Curry Rivel, Nr Langport, Somerset
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