This week marks the 10th anniversary of Gorbachev’s rise to power, the beginning of the era of glasnost and perestroika, but much more than commemorations are in his thoughts, mind and soul. His trip to Novosibirsk left no doubt that he is eager to launch a comeback. Although he claims he has not formally decided to run in next year’s presidential elections, he exhorted audience after audience to dump Yeltsin and elect ““a very experienced politician’’ with – surprise, surprise – all the characteristics of Mikhail Gorbachev (box). But as so often in thepast, he may be misreading the mood of his country. ““Most people did not come so much to listen but just to see a famous person, a part of the history of our country,’’ says Yelena Yurchenko, a math major who watched his performance at the university. ““I don’t believe in his political future. He didn’t use the chance he had.''
At 64, Gorbachev looks fit, rested – and categorically unwilling to accept such judgments about his past or present role. He continues to be treated like a hero on many of his foreign trips and craves that kind of recognition at home, where it has eluded him. And he is willing to re-enter the political arena to try to get it. Convinced that the disillusionment with Yeltsin and other politicians has reached critical proportions, Gorbachev is already mapping out campaign strategies and themes for the coming year, with a stepped-up domestic travel itinerary.
Since losing power in December 1991, Gorbachev has not lived badly. He likes to stress that the only property he owns is a three-room apartment in Moscow’s Lenin Hills, but he still lives with Raisa in a large government dacha on the outskirts of the city. He earns $10,000 to $100,000 for speeches on trips abroad, which he uses to finance the Gorbachev Foundation, his think tank with 110 staffers, and some charitable activities. He recently completed his memoirs, which will be published first in Germany next month. ““I have never been as free as I am now,’’ he says. But he cannot mask his feeling that he has been wronged by the Russian people, who supported him enthusiastically at first and then soured. ““If you don’t produce results tomorrow, you’re good for nothing,’’ he lamented at dinner one night in Novosibirsk.
His deepest resentment is directed at his old nemesis Yeltsin (and the feeling is freely reciprocated). He accuses Yeltsin’s regime of using privatization as a cover for the wholesale looting of the economy – and the president personally of launching the disastrous war in Chechnya merely to boost his sagging popularity.
Many Russians may agree with those views, but they seem far from ready to throw their support to Gorbachev. When people turn out to see him, theypepper him with questions about his record. Pressed to explain the blood spilled by Soviet security forces in Vilnius, Riga andelsewhere on his watch, he attributes such incidents to hard-liners in the KGB who plotted against him. If some of his younger listeners appear willing to consider his argument that Yeltsin should be blamed for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the country’s economic disarray, he hardly gets a hearing from most Russians. ““He destroyed a great state,’’ said worker Vasily Ivchenko, as he watched Gorbachev tour his Novosibirsk machine-tool factory. ““The collapse of the Soviet Union started with Gorbachev, and Yeltsin continued with what he started.''
Just as during his rule, Gorbachev is still trying to have it both ways. He wants to be recognized as the country’s leading reformer, but he brands ““shock therapy’’ as the antithesis ofperestroika, vowing to slow down the pace. Such equivocation satisfies no one. ““Gorbachev was a loser who, despite his youth, was a representative of the old generation,’’ saysSergei Grigoryants, a leading human-rights activist and former political prisoner. In 1993 a mock court of hard-liners condemned Gorbachev to ““eternal damnation and infamy,’’ and he regularly encounters hecklers who want to make sure he serves that sentence.
Whatever signs of modest support there are seem to come from disenchanted intellectuals, who can be termed moderate conservatives by Russian standards. On his trip to Novosibirsk, Gorbachev visited Akademgorodok on the outskirts of the city, a scientific center that generated many of the ideas of the early perestroika period. At a roundtable with faculty members, the talk was about the need for more emphasis on state regulation of the economy and the development of a ““neoconservative consciousness.’’ As Gorbachev put it, ““We understand that for Russia the role of the state is irreplaceable.’’ He also vowed to push for a new union of former Soviet republics.
But that is a message many other potential candidates – from Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov to ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – will also espouse. Ten years after taking power, Gorbachev’s real agenda is to prove that he remains irreplaceable. For all his claims about the simple pleasures of retirement, he has retained the mannerisms of the leader, someone who talks about himself in the third person – as Gorbachev or the ““gensek’’ (Communist Party general secretary), the title he relishes when discussing his past. Above all, he is a man who cannot come to terms with his reduced status. His longing was on display when he paid a surprise visit to Novosibirsk’s Globus Theater. ““Was it hard to be the most popular person in the world?’’ asked actress Olga Stipunova breathlessly. Gorbachev’s eyes sparkled as he replied: ““You can live with that.''
