Word: raisa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There seem to be several Raisas. Most prominent these days is the "Nemesis of Nancy." The First Ladies' little cold war has been the stuff of tabloid headlines ever since Mrs. Gorbachev upstaged Mrs. Reagan by arriving unexpectedly at the 1986 Reykjavik summit (Nancy stayed home). "I missed you in Reykjavik," Raisa said when the two met in Washington last December. Nancy replied icily, "I was told women weren't invited...
...Nancy, who was recovering from breast-cancer surgery and mourning the recent death of her mother. "Their face-off was extraordinary," said one who saw the pair in action. "They didn't seem to understand each other." As a result, Nancy decided to tour Leningrad this week only if Raisa did not come along. Instead, Mrs. Reagan's official escort will be Soviet President Andrei Gromyko's wife Lidiya. Perhaps compatibility charts should have been drawn: Raisa, a Capricorn ("overexacting, rigid"), vs. Nancy, a Cancer ("touchy, unforgiving...
...every site where the two women will meet, and Nancy has an eye on every detail -- from where to sit to be out of the wind to the color of towels in the powder rooms. It should be a meeting to remember. How will Nancy's homework compare with Raisa's recent English lessons? Will Raisa's hair, which was formerly hennaed in the salon of Moscow's exclusive International Hotel, match the brilliance of Nancy's, which is touched up with Clairol's Moongold and Chestnut? Will the Soviet First Lady return to the gold-lame sandals she wore...
...second popular caricature is "Wrap It Up" Raisa, the Soviet Lorelei Lee who, after admiring British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's diamond earrings on a 1984 trip to London, dropped into Cartier on New Bond Street to buy a pair ($1,780) for herself, paying with the American Express card. In Paris she asked Yves Saint Laurent for a bottle of his perfume Opium ($175 an ounce) and received it free. In London she canceled a visit to the tomb of Karl Marx for a chance to see the crown jewels. She owns four fur coats and wore three...
Next there is Raisa the Unknown. Considering that she is the wife of the leader of one of the world's superpowers, there are wide gaps in the public record, at home and abroad, about her early life. Only within the past few years has there been general agreement in the West on Raisa Maximovna Gorbachev's birth date, Jan. 5, 1932, and that she was born in the Siberian town of Rubtsovsk. Her father was a railroad engineer named Maxim Titorenko. That is about all there is to her official biography...