This greatly downplays both the amount information and the complexity involved. Their first destination was Moscow, Russia, where Cyrillic is used. Their second

This greatly downplays both the amount information and the complexity involved. Their first destination was Moscow, Russia, where Cyrillic is used. Their second destination Georgia, where a different script is used [0], and then Armenia, where a third one is used [1]. At the time, none of those had a "standard" way to write them in English, so even if you slightly misremember a name or an address, you will have a very hard time figuring out where you actually wanted to go. On top of that, they also wanted to smuggle information out: names of people who wanted to leave the USSR, updates from dissidents, etc. Add to all of this that you would be under constant stress and surveillance and you wouldn't want to rely on your memory for all of this information. In the USSR, if you had a tail it was often very obvious you had a tail — it was a part of the intimidation tactics to put people under pressure and make them make mistakes. Of course, a paper trail of any kind is risky, but past a certain point you simply can't juggle everything in your head. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet