well. Michel Tatu, a prominent French Kremlinologist and author



of a forthcomingbiography of Gorbachev, is convinced that he



joined in the vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric of Stalin's last



purge, launched just before the dictator's death in early 1953.



Mlynar does not deny that, but he insists that Gorbachev



steered clear of any individual persecutions.







By 1955, the year of Gorbachev's graduation, the Stalinist ice



had broken in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev had taken over



and was winding down the terror. Ghostly figures began drifting



back into Moscow from the labor camps. But at the start of this



period of ferment and change, Gorbachev removed himself and



Raisa from the relative sophistication of Moscow and returned



to the Stavropol area, where he was to stay for the next 23



years. According to Neznansky, the young graduate tried for a



position with the Moscow Komsomol apparatus but lost out to a



classmate and had little choice but to return to the provinces



if he wanted to continue a career in party politics. It may be



too that Gorbachev felt an obligation to the Stavropol Krai



(territory) authorities, who had apparently paid part of his



university expenses, or that he was simply homesick.







In any event, the Stavropol period remains the most obscure of



Gorbachev's life. It is known that he rose fast, from a minor



job in the local Komsomol to its first secretary after less than



a year, then through a variety of Komsomol and, later, party



jobs. By 1962, when he was only 31, he was choosing party



members for promotion throughout Stavropol Krai. Finally in



1970, at the age of 39, he became first secretary of the



territory, a job equivalent to governor of an area roughly the



size of South Carolina, with about 2.4 million people. Along



the way, he became a specialist in farming, the main activity



of the area. He took correspondence courses from Stavropol



Agricultural Institute, and in 1967 added a degree in



agriculture to his Moscow law degree. Soviet emigres and



Stavropol residents provide some intriguing glimpses of



Gorbachev on his way up the party apparat.







Gorbachev showed an avid interest in the press. Vladimir



Maximov, a writer now living in Paris who worked for a Stavropol



Komsomol newspaper in the 1950s, recalls that the young official



often visited the paper's offices for a chat. "He would sit



down with us in a casual manner," says Maximov. "We would



uncork a bottle of wine [for all his antialcoholism campaigning,



Gorbachev still enjoys an occasional drink] and usually talk



politics. Khrushchev's report on the crimes of the Stalinist



era had recently appeared. The entire country was still reeling



from shock." Maximov and others of Gorbachev's generation,



however, remember the late 1950s as an exciting time.



Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th



Communist Party Congress in 1956 briefly opened the way to a



much freer atmosphere. It was false dawn. Repression resumed



a few years later. To this day, however, educated SOviets of



Gorbachev's generation, whose political attitudes were formed



then and who are now moving into positions of power, sometimes



refer to themselves as "children of the 20th Congress."







Gorbachev's interest in the press continued throughout the



Stavropol period. As party boss of the area, he often met with



regional journalists for talks similar to those he now holds in



Moscow with the national press. Unlike other party officials,



he would stress that it was not enough for the journalists to



write articles that were ideologically correct; they also had



to be interesting. "Is anyone reading what you write?" he would



ask.







Gorbachev remained open and accessible to his constituents. He



usually set out on foot for his job each morning.



Stavropolitans quickly learned that they could avoid having to



make a formal appointment at Gorbachev's office on Lenin Square



by buttonholing him on his walk up Dzerzhinsky Street and



discussing their problems then. He also began in Stavropol Krai



the walkabouts that were later to cause a national sensation



when he continued the practice as General Secretary. On a visit



to a village in the Izobilnynsky district, he heard from an



indignant mother of six children how the manager of a state



store had treated her rudely. The storekeeper was fired.



Gorbachev showed some independence from Moscow when he was



Stavropol party boss. Turned down for state financing of a



permanent circus building, he solicited funds from local



organizations and institutions and got the building put up



anyway.







The Gorbachevs relieved the monotony of provincial life with



several trips to Western Europe, Mikhail traveling as a member



of party delegations visiting foreign Communists and Raisa once



or twice accompanying him. On the first trip, in 1966,



Gorbachev later recalled, the couple rented a Renault and spent



several weeks driving 3,400 miles through the length and breadth



of France, with a side trip to Italy.







Was Gorbachev getting restless with provincial posts? Perhaps.



Mlynar, who was rising toward the top level of the Czech



Communist Party, visited his old classmate in 1967 and recalls



that Gorbachev complained about excessiveinterference by Moscow



in local affairs. Mlynar described the sweeping reforms that



Alexander Dubcek was then beginning in Czechoslovakia. He



remembers Gorbachev saying, with a sign, "Perhaps there are



possibilities in Czechoslovakia because conditions are



different." The Czech reforms, however, were crushed by Soviet



tanks the following year, and Mlynar went into exile; he now



lives in Austria. The two old friends talked and drank through



that afternoon and deep into the night. When they finally



returned to Gorbachev's apartment, much the worse for wear,



Raisa was furious.







Just how Gorbachev rose out of provincialobscurity is still



somewhat mysterious. As late as 1978, few outside Stavropol



Krai had ever heard of him. The best answer seems to be that



he attracted a number of powerful patrons. The first was Fyodor



Kulakov, who as party boss in Stavropol first spotted Gorbachev



as having great promise. After Kulakov became Agriculture



Secretary for the entire Soviet Union, Gorbachev eventually



succeeded him in Stavropol--and Kulakov apparently made sure his



protege became known in Moscow. In 1977 the "Ipatovsky method,"



a new technique of harvesting grain quickly by using flying



squads of combines, was judged a smashing success. The idea was



probably Kulakov's, but it was first tried in the district of



Ipatovsky, in Stavropol Krai, under Gorbachev's supervision.



The young regional politician was accorded the honor of an



interview on the front page of Pravda, his first taste of



national publicity.







Geography gave Gorbachev a mighty assist too. Christian



Schmidt- Hauer, a West German journalist and biographer,



observes that if Gorbachev had been party chief in, say,



Murmansk in the far north, he would never have become General



Secretary. But in Stavropol Krai, he was on hand to welcome top



Moscow officials who came to the local spas at Mineralnye Vody



and Kislovodsk for vacations and medical treatment. They found



their host unusual in several respects. Says Soviet Historian



Roy Medvedev: "A regional party first secretary who was



intelligent and congenial would have been considered untypical.



If Gorbachev had yelled, sworn, been a heavy drinker or a high



liver with a rest house outside of town where officials could



be entertained by pretty waitresses, that would have been



considered normal behavior."







Gorbachev was not like that at all. He was a quiet and pleasant



host with a reputation throughout the district for



incorruptibility. Writer Maximov relates a story about a mutual



friend, a poet, who asked Gorbachev as a young Komsomol official



to help him buy a Volga sedan. Gorbachev obligingly used his



influence to speed delivery. The poet promptly sold the car on



the black market and returned to ask Gorbachev for help in



buying another. Says Maximov: "Gorbachev did not usually lose



his temper, but on that occasion he started shouting and threw



the poet out of his office, ordering him never to show his face



there again."







The young party chief's reputation pleased two important spa



guests: Mikhail Suslov, then the chief Soviet ideologist, and



KGB Chief Yuri Andropov, both austere figures disgusted by the



corruption of the Brezhnev era. When Kulakov died in 1978, he



left vacant the position of Communist Party Central Committee



Secretary in charge of agriculture. To fill it, General



Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, presumably acting on the advice of



Suslov and Andropov, chose a man he had evidently met only



recently: Gorbachev. That meeting occurred on Sept. 19, 1978,



at the tiny railroad station in Mineralnye Vody, where



Brezhnev's train stopped for a brief time. In one of the more



remarkable moments in Soviet history, four men who were all to



serve as General Secretary found themselves on the same narrow



station platform: Brezhnev; Andropov, who had come over from



the nearby spa and in 1982 would succeed Brezhnev; Konstantin



Chernenko, then Brezhnev's chief aide and in 1984 Andropov's



successor; and Gorbachev, who would take over from Chernenko as



General Secretary the following year. Less than a month after



that gathering, Gorbachev was plucked out of Stavropol to



become, at 47, a member of the national hierarchy, ranking 20th



among all Soviet leaders.







How he leaped from there to No. 1 in only seven more years is



another question still not fully answered. Certainly his rise



was not attributable to any glittering success in agriculture.



Quite the opposite: the grain harvest fell from a record 230



million tons in 1978, when Gorbachev was taking over the



agriculture portfolio, to a calamitous total of perhaps only 155



million tons in 1981. Bad weather played a role. So did



Brezhnev, who announced a grandiose reorganization of



agriculture that seemed to create more problems than it solved.



Still, it is remarkable that Gorbachev managed not only to



escape blame but to advance his career amid the farming fiasco.



Only a year after returning to Moscow, he became a candidate



member of the Politburo. The following year, at 49, he was made



a full member. Gorbachev was eight years younger than the next



youngest Politburo member and 21 years younger than the average



age of his colleagues.







One reason Gorbachev's agriculture record was not held against



him was imply that the Kremlin leadership found itself in



desperate need of new blood. Brezhnev's health was faltering,



and his 18-year regime was sinking into a twilight of stagnation



and corruption. When Brezhnev died in 1982 and Andropov came



into office with plans for reform, he immediately began grooming



Gorbachev to become a key lieutenant in his clean-up campaign.







Gorbachev was already preparing himself for national



leadership. While still in charge of farming, he gathered Soviet



academic experts for a series f seminars held sometimes in the



Central Committee offices, sometimes in a dacha outside Moscow.



The sessions started with problems of agriculture but quickly



developed into freewheeling discussions of what was wrong with



the economy in general and how it might be fixed. Among the



participants were Economists Abel Aganbegyan, who had been



urging decentralization and a wider role for market incentives



since the mid-1960s, and Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a leading



sociologist. Zaslavskaya recalls one encounter with Gorbachev:



"I sat next to him. It is incredible what power and drive



emanate from him. One feels as if it were a strong field of



energy. His vitality is extraordinary, and yet, although you



feel this tension, he is a good listener and waits for you to



finish."







The rising Kremlin star got a firsthand look at how far the



Soviet economy had fallen behind the West's. When Gorbachev



joined the national hierarchy, he was already well traveled by



comparison with such other Soviet leaders at Andropov. who never



set foot outside the Communist world, and Suslov, who reportedly



once told a visa applicant that he saw no reason why anyone



would want to journey beyond he U.S.S.R.







As a Politburo member Gorbachev in 1983 headed a Soviet



agricultural delegation on a visit to Canada and spent ten days



poking around farms, processing plants and supermarkets. At one



cattle ranch, he asked to see "some of the workers." The



rancher replied that there were none; he ran the spread of



several hundred acres with only his family and handful of day



laborers. A Canadian host who speaks Russian heard Gorbachev



mutter under his breath, "We are not going to see this [in the



Soviet Union] for another 50 years." Eugene Whelan, then



Minister of Agriculture and Gorbachev's official host, was



surprised on another occasion to hear the Soviet leader comment



about the invasion of Afghanistan: "It was a mistake." (He was



later to call Afghanistan a "bleeding wound," but in public he



still justifies the invasion.) In the same year, however,



Gorbachev served on a Politburo crisis-management subgroup that



sought to justify the Soviet downing of a Korean Air Lines



passenger jet by asserting that the plane had been on a spying



mission for the U.S.







By the time a fatal kidneyailment cut short Andropov's tenure



in early 1984, Gorbachev was already a candidate to succeed his



former mentor. At Andropov's funeral, Gorbachev made a telling



gesture of his closeness to the late General Secretary: he was



the only Politburo member publicly to console Andropov's



bereaved widow Tatyana. But the Old Guard made a final stand,



choosing Chernenko instead. Gorbachev went along, and even



agreed to make the nominating speech. He probably knew his turn



would come soon enough. Ailing and 72, Chernenko was not going



to last long. In fact, through much of his year in power



Chernenko was so ill that Gorbachev, his principal deputy, in



effect ran the country.







Even so, he had opposition. Grigori Romanov, the hard-line



former Leningrad party boss who was once thought be Gorbachev's



chief rival, had apparently given up on winning the top job for



himself. But at the Politburo session called immediately after



Chernenko's death, Romanov reportedly tried a stop-Gorbachev



maneuver, nominating Moscow Party Boss Viktor Grishin for



General Secretary. By some accounts, however, KGB Chief Viktor



Chebrikov hinted that his agency had compiled dossiers on the



corruption in the moscow party apparatus that could be highly



embarrassing to Grishin. (Chebrikov was then a candidate member



of the Politburo; he has since moved up to full membership.)



Andrei Gromyko, then Foreign Minister, carried the day with a



nominating speech for Gorbachev during which he coined the now



celebrated remark, "This man has a nice smile, but he has iron



teeth." Gromyko's speech was surprising in two respects: it



appears to have been improvised, and it contained none of the



lengthy recitation of the hero's accomplishments traditional on



such occasions. Gromyko appeared to be saying: this man has



not really done all that much yet, but he is still the best we



have.







Gorbachev had been in power only a month when he roamed around



the industrial Proletarsky district of Moscow, visiting



supermarkets, chatting with workers at the Likhachyov truck



factory, discussing computer training with teachers at School



No. 514 and nurses' pay with the staff of City Hospital No. 53.



He even dropped into a young couple's apartment for tea. That



was the first of the walkabouts that have taken him, sometimes



accompanied by Raisa, from Murmansk in the north to Kamchatka