From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Perestroika has come to the press. Kind of. Emulating the White House, the Kremlin laid on a charter plane (only $4,800 a head) for the Moscow-based press corps to follow Mikhail Gorbachev on his latest round of international travels. But the lumbering Ilyushin-62 jet, dubbed "Glasnost One," proved how far Gorbachev has to go to turn his promises into practice. Caviar and vodka helped while away the 14-hour flight, but the Soviets missed the opportunity -- so dear to U.S. officialdom -- to "spin" the news when they provided no briefings for their captive audience. On the ground in New York City, Soviet good intentions faltered as reporters were dumped unceremoniously on the pavement outside the United Nations, one hour late for the first Soviet press briefing. When Gorbachev abruptly headed home to survey his country's earthquake damage, TIME Moscow bureau chief John Kohan hitched a ride to Armenia aboard an American mercy flight and happily avoided another trip on Glasnost One.

The trials of covering the other superpower are nothing new to Kohan, a longtime student of the Gorbachev phenomenon. A fluent speaker of Russian who studied for four months at Leningrad University in 1974, Kohan began tracking the Kremlin's rising star after joining TIME as a reporter-researcher in 1975. As an associate editor in the World section, he wrote the March 1985 cover story on Gorbachev's appointment to the top job of General Secretary. A week later Kohan left New York City to report from TIME's Bonn bureau, where Gorbachev's new policies held a constant fascination.

Since taking over the Moscow bureau last June, Kohan has found that Gorby watching is a seven-day-a-week, round-the-clock job. The General Secretary's four-car Moscow motorcade often whisks past Kohan's Kutuzovsky Prospect apartment en route to the Kremlin. But keeping an eye on Gorbachev is as exciting as it is demanding. Says Kohan: "There have been times during the past hectic months of political activity when I have wondered if Gorbachev has not reached a dead end. Then, suddenly, he will pull off a surprise, and everything will move forward again. He has shown an endless talent for the unexpected."