From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Mikhail Gorbachev makes so much news that for the past five years he has been almost a daily staple of the front pages and nightly broadcasts. Exclusive access is another matter: since taking office, he has given only a handful of interviews to American journalists. The first was to TIME in August 1985. "Do you think we're never going to meet again, so you are going to pile everything into one interview?" he joked after more than an hour of conversation. We did meet again. Last week, on the eve of his summit meeting with George Bush, Gorbachev invited Time Warner editor-in-chief Jason McManus and five TIME staff members to his Kremlin office for a tour d'horizon that lasted an hour.

The Soviet President engaged his visitors with that combination of energy and self-confidence for which he has become legendary. As his remarks were being translated, he made occasional asides to editor at large Strobe Talbott and Moscow bureau chief John Kohan, both fluent Russian speakers. "He is talking a long time," Gorbachev said of translator Pavel Palashenko at one point. "Did I really say that much?" When managing editor Henry Muller tried to slip in one last question, Gorbachev addressed him sternly as "Comrade Editor," then, with a laugh, changed it to "Mr. Editor." Says chief of correspondents John Stacks, who covered Washington for 20 years: "He was more in command of the situation than any American politician I have ever seen."

The only TIME representative who was present for both interviews -- and also for a session with Leonid Brezhnev in 1979 -- is the Moscow bureau's Felix Rosenthal. "Although Gorbachev in 1985 was a vivid contrast to Brezhnev -- young, smiling, talkative -- you could still sense a successful provincial party boss," he says. "Gorbachev in 1990 is polished, quite at home in his Kremlin office with the modern furniture that fits his image."

At the end of the interview, photographer David Burnett got Gorbachev, on the spur of the moment, to pose by the window. Late for his next meeting, the Soviet leader would not keep still. "He began to walk away after I had taken only four shots," Burnett says. But he was able to take several dozen pictures, including the one on the opening pages of our special section.