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- <text id=91TT2875>
- <title>
- Dec. 23, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 23, 1991 Gorbachev:A Man Without A Country
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 16
- </hdr><body>
- <p> What do British writer Salman Rushdie, American filmmaker
- Oliver Stone and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev have in
- common? Only this: all three are central figures in important
- stories that were in the news last week, and all three gave
- exclusive interviews to TIME, contained in this issue.
- </p>
- <p> In hiding with a multimillion-dollar price on his head,
- the India-born Rushdie made a surprise appearance at a dinner
- held by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
- honoring the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment.
- Beforehand, TIME International managing editor Karsten Prager
- presented Rushdie with an article that appeared last week about
- the Indian writers he has inspired. Later, in a well-guarded
- safe house outside Manhattan, the two talked for 1 1/2 hours.
- "Quite simply," says Prager, "he is still determined to be
- heard."
- </p>
- <p> Oliver Stone also has a story to tell--about a dismal
- day in Dallas that changed American history. Last June, TIME
- criticized the plot of Stone's new movie, JFK--out this week--which argues that Jack Kennedy was felled in a carefully
- concealed coup d'etat. Stone said our comments were part of an
- Establishment cover-up (they were not). Finally we got together
- to discuss his views. "He came armed to the teeth with his
- research," says correspondent Martha Smilgis. "It still didn't
- convince me that there was a general conspiracy, but his movie
- gets you thinking."
- </p>
- <p> Mikhail Gorbachev used his interview with TIME to reject
- speculation that he is on the verge of resigning. On two hours'
- notice last Friday afternoon, the Soviet leader called Moscow
- bureau chief John Kohan and editor-at-large Strobe Talbott to
- his Kremlin office for an 80-minute interview. Also present were
- historian Michael Beschloss, who is co-writing a book with
- Talbott on the Bush-Gorbachev relationship, and TIME's Felix
- Rosenthal. "He exuded a sense of complete control," says Kohan,
- "in what is clearly the most difficult crisis of his political
- career."
- </p>
- <p> Our goal is to cut through the media clutter and get to
- the central truths of a story. This week we're proud to bring
- you the unvarnished words of the chief participants in three
- fascinating events who chose, as have so many world figures
- before them, to tell their story through TIME.
- </p>
- <p>-- Elizabeth P. Valk
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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