TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/060490/0604053.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.9 KB | 189 lines

                                                                                THE SUMMIT, Page 24

COVER STORIES

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."