on the shores of the Pacific. On several of his tours he has



displayed an easy informality and an almost impish distaste for



ceremonialoratory" title="n.演讲(术)；修辞">oratory. Entering the hall of the Starnikovsky Farm



near Moscow to talk to livestock breeders last summer, he veered



away from the row of seats on the tribunal and perched on the



edge of the table so that he could be closer to the crowd. In



October, at the Baltic Shipyards in Leningrad, a spokesman for



the workers began a monotone welcoming speech expressing a wish



that perestroika would develop even faster. Gorbachev



interrupted with playful cries of "Davai! Davai!" (Let's go



to it!), drawing a big laugh from the crowd.







Gorbachev has an apartment in central Moscow, but lives most of



the time in a closed and guarded area of single-family mansions



on the western outskirts of the city. From there he is driven



downtown daily at 9 a.m. in a four-ZIL motorcade: one car for



himself; two for aides and bodyguards, and a heavily curtained



vehicle bristling with antennas that is assumed to carry the



coding equipment for launching nuclear weapons. His main office



is on the fifth floor of the Central committee headquarters, a



quarter of a mile from the Kremlin; he also maintains an office



in a building just behind the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin



wall, but he uses it mostly to receive visitors. He usually



returns home at about 6 p.m. in another motorcade. Extra



traffic police are stationed along Kutuzovsky Prospekt to clear



the central lanes for the four limousines. He stays downtown



late only when there is some special ceremonial function or



when, as often happens, the regular Thursday Politburo meeting



runs into the evening.







While Gorbachev's working schedule does not seem to be overly



taxing, he recently answered an Italian interviewer's question



as to how he spends his free time by saying simply, "I have



none." He is, however, an avid theatergoer. In Stavropol he



and Raisa attended not only every play that opened but also many



dress rehearsals. In Moscow, while preparing for the Washington



summit, they found time to take in The Peace of Brest, a



historical drama about Lenin's early years in power that opened



Nov. 30.







The Gorbachevs have a daughter Irina, 28, who is a physician



and married to another doctor, and two known grandchildren. The



extent to which the Gorbachevs guard their family privacy can



be gauged by some of the things that are not know for sure:



Irina's married name (only the first name of her husband,



Anatoli, has been disclosed); the granddaughter's name (it has



been reported as both Oksana and Xenia); her age (probably



seven); and the sex and name of a second grandchild (Gorbachev



proudly told former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who visited



Moscow last summer, that one had just been born, but would



disclose no more than that).







Gorbachev retains his ties to Privolnoye, going to see his



mother there at least once a year. On one trip to Stavropol in



1982, Gorbachev, by then a member of the Politburo, talked with



aged collective farmers, who complained about their low pensions



of 36 rubles ($49.30) a month. "I know my mother also receives



36 rubles, but she keeps chickens and a cow; why don't you?"



Gorbachev replied. (Nonetheless, back in Moscow, he saw to it



that pensions were increased.) Maria Panteleyevna regularly



attends Russian Orthodox Church services, and there are reports



that she had Gorbachev baptized. Gorbachev has said that his



grandparents kept icons in their home, hiding them behind



pictures of Lenin and Stalin, and once took him to church. He



added, though, that he had no desire to go back. Officially,



at least, he is an atheist whose occasional references to God



are probably no more than an unconsciousrepetition of phrases



common in the rural Russia of his boyhood.







As a law student, Gorbachev received some practical training in



oratory" title="n.演讲(术)；修辞">oratory. That, plus a natural flair for speaking, has produced



a man who is considered the finest orator of any Soviet leader



since Lenin (who was also trained as a lawyer). Gorbachev's



phraseology is not remarkable, or at least does not read well



in translation. The English version of Perestroika, published



in the U.S. just before the December summit, is blandly general.



But in a Gorbachev speech, as TV viewers around the world have



discovered, phrases that seem flat on the printed page suddenly



come to life.







Russian is a language spoken with the hands, the eyebrows, and



occasional shake of the head from side to side or a shrug of



the shoulders. Gorbachev has mastered those gestures, and more.



He may slice the air with a modified karate chop or spin his



hands one over the other like a pinwheel, then extend them palms



up in a gesture of vulnerability, only to clench them into fists



a moment later. All the time his intense eyes lock onto a



listener's. The eyes, he once told an audience in Prague, never



lie. Much of his animation comes through even in translation.



In a TV interview, for example, he may pause reflectively after



a question, start an answer with a few slow phrases, then burst



into a torrent of words that an interpreter can barely keep up



with.







Such skills have served Gorbachev well in his 33 months in



office. Though he grumbles about opposition to his policies from



a bureaucracy that "does not want change and does not want to



lose some rights associated with privileges," he has



consolidated his power rapidly. He had thoroughly purged the



ranks of the Politburo, the Central Committee and government



ministries of leaders judged to be incompetent or dragging their



feet on reform. More than half of all government ministers and



44% of party Central Committee members have been replaced since



he took over.







Gorbachev's idea of glasnost stops well short of Western-style



artistic and journalistic freedom. Nonetheless, the policy has



gone further than anyone would have predicted even a few years



ago, winning Gorbachev the enthusiasticapproval of



intellectuals. Says Vitali Korotich, editor of Ogonyok, an



illustrated weekly that has published hard-hitting articles



about social problems as well as anthologies of long-suppressed



poetry: "This is an evening of dancing in a society that has



never danced."







Perestroika, however, is still more platitude than policy.



Gorbachev confessed in June that "despite tremendous efforts,



the restructuring drive has in actual fact not reached many



localities." In particular, agricultural reforms designed to



give farmers more incentive, which Gorbachev began experimenting



with back in Stavropol and for which he supposedly won Politburo



approval as long ago as 1983, have yet to be put into effect



nationwide. Meanwhile, the economy continues to fall behind



those of the West. As recently as 1975, the Soviet economy was



about 58% as large as its U.S. counterpart. But by 1984 that



figure had fallen to 54%, and the gap is probably still growing.



WIth his usual hard-boiled realism, Gorbachev told the Central



Committee shortly before becoming General Secretary, "We cannot



remain a major power in world affairs unless we put our domestic



house in order."







At best, it will take years before Gorbachev's program of



freeing industry from Moscow's stifling central control results



in any significant increase in the quantity and quality of gods



reaching Soviet consumers. Gorbachev complains that "Soviet



rockets can find Halley's comet and fly to Venus with amazing



accuracy, but...many household appliances are of poor quality."



The Soviet leader may be hard put to maintain the popular



support he is counting on to overcome bureaucratic lethargy and



opposition. Gauging public opinion in the U.S.S.R. is a highly



uncertain art, but letters to the Soviet press often approve the



idea of perestroika while simultaneously complaining that the



writers have not seen much of it yet. Some polls disclose



considerable grumbling that perestroika has so far meant only



harder work for little measurable reward. Consumers may soon



have to pay more for some of the necessities of life if



Gorbachev follows through on his plan to trim or eliminate many



state subsidies. The Kremlin boss rightly complains that the



subsidies on bread, for example, make is so cheap that children



sometimes use loaves as footballs. But a higher price for



bread, while it might be fully justified by production costs,



is likely to cause strong discontent.







Gorbachev acknowledges that his antialcohol campaign is highly



unpopular. He once told a group of writers that he was aware



of "threats" as well as grumbling from the long lines of people



queueing up to buy scarce and expensive vodka. One gag has a



man at the end of one of the liquor-store lines announcing that



he is so furious he is going over to the Kremlin to shoot



Gorbachev. He returns in a few minutes, however, and resumes



his place in the queue. "Well, did you do it?" asks a comrade.



"You must be joking," the would-be assassin replies. "The line



over there is even longer."







In foreign policy too, Gorbachev's approach is a mixture of



much touted "new thinking" and dismayingly old reflexes.



Despite his flexibility in the realm of superpower relations,



he maintains some strange attitudes about the U.S. By his own



account, he began reading American history as a law student, and



he has kept himself remarkably well informed. In recent



interviews he has referred offhandedly to matters, such as



Ronald Reagan's "economic bill of rights," that are not widely



known even to U.S. citizens.







Nonetheless, he seems to have a streak of what can only be



described as anti-Americanism. Perhaps the first American to



have an extended conversation with him was John Chrystal,



chairman of Bankers Trust of Des Moines and a frequent traveler



to the Soviet Union, who called on Gorbachev in 1981. Says



Chrystal: "He does not believe, never having been here, that



the U.S. has abject poverty and quite a lot of it. My



impression is that he thinks there are whole towns that are just



sort of destitute." Eugene Whelan, the former Canadian



Agriculture Minister who was later Gorbachev's host in North



America, also visited him in 1981 and got into an argument about



armaments. Says Whelan: "He was going on about how the U.S. was



the aggressor, how it was making weapons. He said the U.S. was



returning to the conditions of the 1950s." When Whelan



remonstrated that in the American view it was the Soviet Union



that had piled up weapons far beyond any legitimate defense



needs, Gorbachev brusquely responded, "That is erroneous."







At Chernenko's funeral in 1985, Gorbachev encountered Armand



Hammer, the American businessman who has been trading with the



Soviets since Lenin's day, and denounced Ronald Reagan to him



as a man who wanted war. He mellowed after meeting the U.S.



President later that year at their first summit in Geneva, and



today speaks respectfully of Reagan. Still, when Hammer called



at the Kremlin in 1986, Gorbachev told him, "Your President



couldn't make peace if he wanted to. He's a prisoner of the



military-industrial complex," which in Gorbachev's mind seems



to be both all powerful and moved by an implacable hostility to



the Soviets. Hammer tried to dissuade him but got nowhere,



largely, he suspects, because Gorbachev had been put in a



defensive mood by U.S. and other foreign criticism of his



handling of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear-plant accident. Says



Hammer: "Gorbachev's weakness is that he has a temper, and that



he flares up, and that he had a lot of pride, of course, and



self-confidence." The Soviet leader has generally managed to



keep his temper under control in public. Indeed, friends and



opponents agree that he is almost invariably polite. But he



does blow up now and then-- especially, as foreign TV viewers



have discovered, when he is questioned sharply about the Soviet



Union's human-rights record.







Gorbachev, however, need not admire Americans in order to live



peaceably with them. Nor is it necessary for the U.S. to enroll



in a Gorbachev personality cult in order to recognize the Soviet



leader as being a figure of hope, for all his contradictions.



His upbringing, schooling and rise to power have produced a man



of immense incongruities, stubborn and flexible, a faithful



ideologue and a radical experimenter.







He could be the most dangerous adversary the U.S. and its allies



have faced in decades--or the most constructive. Molded by



famine and war, promised a measure of hope after Stalin's demise



and then abruptly disillusioned, Gorbachev is not the sort of



man who would willingly drag his country back into the dark days



of repression, economic hardship and international obloquy. If



there is a lesson in the 56-year education of Mikhail



Sergeyevich Gorbachev, it is that a new unfamiliar kind of



leader has risen in the Soviet Union, and that the old rules of



dealing with that long-suffering land are suddenly outdated.



For the West, the education is just beginning.







--By George J. Church. Reported by David Aikman/Washington,



James O. Jackson/Moscow and John Kohan/Stavropol

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