A Chat with the Gorbachevs

By Bruce W. Nelan

NOTHING ABOUT MIKHAIL GORBAchev's triumphal two-week tour of the U.S. $ suggested that he was a politician removed from power. Americans, who still see the last President of the Soviet Union as the man most responsible for ending the cold war, received him with standing ovations from Stanford University to the New York Stock Exchange to Capitol Hill. Though he resigned his office more than four months ago, he has lost neither the aura nor the trappings of a major political figure.

Nothing about Gorbachev himself, when he met for an hour with TIME's editors at the Waldorf Towers in New York City last week, suggested a diminution of power either. This was, his press representative explained, not an interview but only an informal conversation, and he could not be quoted directly.

Riding the transcontinental wave of applause and buoyed by his days of high- profile meetings, the ex-President was as ebullient and voluble as ever. He looked fit and sounded feisty. This was not a man nursing a sense of regret or meditating on mistakes he might have made. Though his visit to the U.S. was ostensibly to raise funds and make contacts for his new political think tank, the Gorbachev Foundation, it also eased him smoothly into the rarefied ranks of senior statesmen whose pronouncements are expected to reverberate around the globe. His theme is a corollary of his own perestroika: the whole world is in need of change and reorientation.

Gorbachev's speaking style, usually discursive and indirect, is more hortatory than ever, almost condescending in its certitude. He can pontificate, but then compensates by flashing his grin, bouncing in his chair and making a sweeping gesture to pull in his listeners. There is much that is theatrical in his performance, beginning with his voice, which he projects like an operatic baritone. He takes many questions as personal criticism and obviously believes the best defense is a good offense, demolishing the questioner's premise as he bulldozes into the points he wants to make.

Gorbachev would not be drawn into an admission that socialist theory had failed or that communism was dead. An alternative between capitalism and socialism is in the offing, he said. The use of force for political ends is being discredited. The 20th century has little to teach the 21st, and new thinking is needed.

Looking back at perestroika and glasnost, he did concede that he had no idea what those changes would lead to. He thought at the outset that he could tinker a bit to ease the pressures on the Soviet economy and make society more comfortable. He blames the system for making that impossible. Initially, he said, some progress was visible, but when senior officials of the party and state saw how the reforms might threaten their power and positions, they put on the brakes. If the ruling hierarchy's grip was to be broken, he decided, a more democratic form of politics would have to be introduced. He assumed that power would have to be decentralized and that he would have to give up some of his authority. But he could not and did not know where it all was headed.

His wife Raisa interrupted to recall that she too is often asked whether she would have supported his reform plans if she had known what was going to happen. She is the wounded one, plainly marked by the trauma of losing power, and she was willing to speak on the record. "Had I known all that I know now," she said, "I still think I would have decided to support him." Despite her pride in what she called "the tremendous breakthrough" of perestroika, she says the past seven years were full of "traumatic events" and that 1991 was "tragic." She cited "the 73 hours spent under arrest" in the hands of coup plotters last August, "the betrayal by people who had worked closely with my husband," the collapse of the economy, "the rupturing of the spiritual links of our culture," and the dismembering of the Soviet Union. "I cannot regard Ukraine as some kind of foreign country," she said. "Ukraine is us."

Gorbachev aptly noted that he was the first Soviet President who was neither buried nor arrested but continues to play a visible public role. Russians don't know what to make of this and are suspicious. His foundation and his other activities, he observed, could lead to conflicts with the newly arrived crop of politicians who have much to learn about the give and take of democracy.

He shrugs off threats to his personal safety. She is openly worried. They were in physical danger once and could be again, she fears. She sees threats all around: the Russian press, she says, is mounting an anti-Gorbachev campaign, printing reports that he has bought houses in foreign countries or has smuggled vast sums of money abroad. In a rough-and-tumble society like Russia's, this spells uncertainty at least.

Gorbachev is outspokenly weary of criticism, from radical reformers and hard-line communists alike. Both sides hated and vilified him for years, he says, but offered no solutions. He calls on those who can solve Russia's problems to speak up and those who cannot to keep quiet. What passes for decisive leadership today, he says -- naming no names -- has done nothing to dampen continuing outbreaks of nationalist upheaval and ethnic bloodletting.

Despite the economic and political crises in the republics of the former Soviet Union, Gorbachev projects an overwhelming optimism. Russia is down, he says, but will rise again. Although he vows he will not become part of the opposition and has no political ambitions, his continuing involvement in high policy implies he may see himself as the once and future President. His country is in no mood to recall him to power now, and he cannot be sure it ever will. But if it does, his undiminished self-confidence indicates that he is ready to answer.