Robert Eksuzyan

In the dull Soviet world where most people in official or semi-official jobs were ultra-cautious around us correspondents, Robert was always the wonderful exception: a natural raconteur, he was warm-hearted, voluble, and often intentionally goading. He was also famously irritable and, though no great supporter of the regime, he would jump in and speak his mind if he thought a correspondent was coming out with empty anti-Soviet clap-trap. He loved a good argument and I’ve lost count of the number of blazing rows I had with the dear man in my three tours in Moscow bureau. Most of us ascribed his seeming hot-headedness to his southern homeland of Abkhazia, the breakaway region of Georgia.

A universal character, he loved the company of young folk whom he always encouraged. Towards women, he was gallantry itself. He once chewed out a Western colleague for divulging the age of a woman - of a “certain age” - whose birthday we were celebrating. He was a good friend to myself and Lynn in our early Brezhnev days, and - in our later tours - to our sons. My regret is that I never saw him in Gagra on his home patch where I like to think he had a reputation of being one of the town’s wise heads. Reuters indeed owed him a huge amount. ■