Word: mikhail
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...year-old party patriarch is one of the world's last communist stalwarts, an ideological dinosaur rapidly headed for extinction. But you'd never know it to talk to him. Let Mikhail Gorbachev resign as party boss, and let the roll of party defectors grow faster than a meat line in Moscow. Gus Hall still insists that communism is not dead, that socialism is as inevitable as ever, that capitalism will be destroyed. "The problem is not with socialism. The problem is with human error, mistakes of leadership," argues Hall, groping to explain the earthquake in the Soviet Union...
...hurried back to New York. Though he calls the action unconstitutional, Hall evinces some sympathy for its plotters. "It was an attempt to deal with real problems, but in a wrong way," he explains. He dislikes Boris Yeltsin ("Now I think he becomes the biggest danger") as well as Mikhail Gorbachev (an "opportunist" who "tends to sit on both sides of the fence"). A hard- liner at heart, Hall blasts both men for leading the Soviet Union down the capitalist road. Once capitalism's failures emerge, he predicts, the Soviets will scurry back to socialism. No wonder critics have dubbed...
Washington did not join in the initial rush. The U.S. never accepted Soviet sovereignty over the Baltics, but it resisted public pressure to send in the diplomats. It held back partly to avoid complicating Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to salvage the rest of the union and partly to be sure the three states were fully in control of their own territory. George Bush called on Moscow to stop standing "against the winds of the inevitable" and formalize Baltic independence. If Moscow keeps dawdling, the White House said, the U.S. would announce recognition this week...
...Mikhail Gorbachev drinks alcohol only on rare ceremonial occasions. When he toasts friends and dignitaries, it is nearly always with fruit juice. After he came to power, he curtailed vodka production to save his country from alcoholism. Ironically, that may have been the vice that saved...
RAISA GORBACHEV'S apparent nervous breakdown did not surprise top Soviet analysts. The normally vigorous First Lady was showing signs of tension when she accompanied her husband to the London economic summit in July. Drawing aside Barbara Bush, Raisa confided her worries about Mikhail's political future, even hinting that she feared for his life. Soviet officials in Europe report that she became hysterical several times during her Crimean captivity, and speculate that she has suffered a stroke and a heart attack...