The Eye of the Storm

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

Even by his standards, it was an extraordinary week for the man in the spare, spacious office on the third floor of the Council of Ministers building inside the Kremlin. Any one of the setbacks that befell him between Monday and Friday would have been a severe test of his ingenuity and stamina. His attempt to revive a stagnant economy seemed only to be provoking fresh resistance from populace and parliament alike. Just as the war of nerves between the Kremlin and secessionists in Lithuania entered a new and delicate phase, Mikhail Gorbachev suddenly faced a challenge to his power much closer to home. His only real rival in the turbulent arena of Soviet politics, the maverick former Politburo member Boris Yeltsin, mounted an impressive campaign to become the president of the country's largest and most important republic, the Russian federation.

Nor was all quiet on the international front. With Gorbachev preparing to leave for this week's summit meeting in Washington, his host George Bush indicated that because too many Americans see Gorbachev as the bully of the Baltics, it might be difficult to lift trade restrictions against the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Gorbachev's Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, met with his West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in Geneva. It was an upbeat meeting except on what may be the single most neuralgic point for Soviet foreign policy: Genscher reiterated that a unified Germany will be a member of NATO.

Despite all these new problems and reminders of old ones, Gorbachev was still trying to convey the impression that he was driving events rather than reacting to them. In one of his boldest political gambles yet, he linked the implementation of economic reform -- higher prices, lower state subsidies and the introduction of some free-market mechanisms -- to a nationwide referendum. So much, he seemed to be saying, for the twin charges that he is unwilling to submit to genuine democracy and afraid of tough decisions. The immediate response of his fellow citizens was not encouraging. In Moscow and other cities, panicky shoppers stripped stores of what little remained on the shelves. Miners in the Donbass region who struck for three weeks last summer said they would protest the impending price rises and call for a nationwide strike next month. While Gorbachev's critics were puzzling over that ploy, he made a tantalizing new offer to the Lithuanians: their own state in two to three years if they "freeze" their unilateral declaration of independence. Then, when he met with French President Francois Mitterrand for a tour of the horizon, Gorbachev reiterated his insistence that ending the cold war means ^ retiring NATO.

In the midst of these multiple challenges, Gorbachev met for an hour last Tuesday with five journalists from TIME for his only interview before leaving for the summit. All around the world, and all around the Soviet Union, people may be wondering how long Gorbachev will last, and how he has survived with so many things going so wrong. Those questions, however, were far from his thinking. He was the man at the eye of the storm, supremely confident that he will still be working his will and wit on the world when the thunder and gale- force winds are spent.

Dispensing quickly with protocol, Gorbachev motioned his visitors to join him, along with two aides and an interpreter, in deep-cushioned brown leather chairs ranged around a small oval table of stylishly crafted, elegantly polished black wood. The intimate setting was in marked contrast to the traditional long, rectangular, green baize-covered table at which delegations in Communist countries square off over battlements of bottled mineral water.

Gorbachev was at the top of his form as a master of human interaction. He has elevated eye contact and hand gestures to an art form, using both not just for emphasis but also for nuance: a little wink when he wants his listeners to join him in a smile, a rabbit chop or a wagging finger when he wants them to remember who is boss. His probing, dark brown eyes are constantly scanning his listeners, looking by turns stern, quizzical, amused, playful. When eyes meet, they both challenge and hint at shared confidences. Whatever lies nearby -- a fountain pen, a gray glasses case from a Paris optician, his gold-rimmed bifocals -- quickly becomes a prop for Gorbachev's one-man show. When the hands are at rest, his thumbs twiddle, not so much in impatience as with excess energy. He modulates his baritone voice for maximum effect, sometimes dropping the volume so that visitors automatically lean toward him. His lilting south Russian intonation softens the harsh edge of a remonstration.

Nearly five years ago, when Gorbachev gave TIME his first face-to-face interview with Western journalists, he had been in office for seven months. Then, he relied extensively on typewritten notes, color-coded in red, blue and green. Last week he spoke extemporaneously on everything from ecology to German unification to the concept of "civil society." He made knowing references to American politics and economics, not always drawing conclusions favorable to his own country. Highlights:

-- Like virtually all his fellow citizens, Gorbachev is absorbed by the Soviet Union's domestic problems. He described as a "shift in direction comparable in magnitude to the October Revolution" the package of reform measures that his Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, publicly announced two days later. He added, however, that they would not require so many sacrifices as Poland's "shock therapy," which entailed skyrocketing prices and widespread unemployment.

-- The only foreign policy issue that Gorbachev wanted to dwell on at any length was German membership in NATO. He asserted, almost pugnaciously, that the issue will be an area of "major disagreement" when he sits down with George Bush in the Oval Office.

-- In a thinly veiled jab at West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Gorbachev said his "biggest concern" in foreign policy was "some politicians who still think about international relations mostly with respect to their own terms of office and electoral ambitions at a time when we are trying to lay down the foundations for a new international community."

-- Hinting at the offer he would make later in the week, Gorbachev stressed his commitment to seeking a "political solution" in the Baltics and said there were "new and encouraging signs" of a way to end the crisis. The next day the Lithuanian parliament suspended some of its secessionist legislation, though it stopped short of freezing its March 11 declaration of independence.

-- Of all the troubles he faces, Gorbachev said he is most concerned about the growing "split among the supporters of perestroika" and the challenge to his authority "from the extreme left" and from "ones who pretend to be populists but who don't really represent the people's interest at all." He clearly had in mind Yeltsin, who was politicking vigorously for the post of the presidency of the Russian federation. Gorbachev lobbied personally on behalf of the federation's current Prime Minister, Alexander Vlasov, and accused Yeltsin of favoring a "collapse" of the Soviet Union. But at the end of the week, Vlasov withdrew his candidacy after a verbal drubbing from speakers at the Russian Congress of People's Deputies. The only serious remaining rival to Yeltsin was Ivan Polozkov, the conservative party boss from Krasnodar who has made no secret of his support for another Gorbachev rival, Yegor Ligachev.

On Saturday, Yeltsin was narrowly ahead of Polozkov in a key round of balloting, but failed to clinch the presidency. More feverish politicking is expected this week. One thing is certain: Gorbachev will continue trying to position himself as the centrist alternative to what he called in the interview "crazies" like Yeltsin on the left and the hard-liners on the right.

With such a cacophony of debate and criticism at home, Gorbachev will undoubtedly appreciate the welcome awaiting him in Washington, Minneapolis and San Francisco. It is one of the many ironies of the Gorbachev phenomenon that he has to travel abroad, to the heart of what his predecessors considered the enemy camp, to hear crowds cheer for him. However, in the interview last week, he seemed in no danger of succumbing to the sour mood of so many of his countrymen. Every bit as significant as what he said was an almost eerie serenity rooted in absolute certitude about his course. "My confidence," he said, "comes from knowing that what we're doing is right and necessary. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to bear the burden."