Word: raisa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...extensive interview, Grunwald lightened the serious tone by inquiring whether Gorbachev's attractive wife Raisa would accompany the General Secretary to the summit talks in Geneva. Gorbachev said she would. "That's good," said Grunwald. "You know, the Western press is in love with her." The jocular answer was vintage Gorbachev: "Well, in that case, maybe I should reconsider...
Wives of previous Soviet leaders have stayed so far in the background that Western observers were unsure whether Andropov's wife was still alive until she turned up at his funeral. Gorbachev's stylish wife Raisa, 52, who is a teacher of Marxist philosophy at Moscow University, is often at his side in public appearances, which is apparently a problem for Soviet editors. They run pictures in which she is standing beside Gorbachev, but they do not identify her in captions. The Gorbachevs are frequently accompanied by Daughter Irina, a physician in her late 20s, and Granddaughter Oksana, 5, giving...
Delighted Soviets are relishing the idea of having a leader who is not infirm, indeed one who is two decades younger than the leader of the U.S. Jokes about Gorbachev's relative youth abound. One has a worried Raisa asking Gorbachev why he has developed a red splotch on his face to match the birthmark on his forehead. Gorbachev supposedly replies, "It's those old geezers on the Politburo who keep pinching my cheek and saying, 'Nice going...
Soviet citizens were startled one day last week when they turned to their morning reading of Pravda. There, on the front page, was a photograph of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's wife Raisa -- rare exposure indeed for a Soviet First Lady. Just a day earlier Raisa Gorbachev had been mentioned briefly in a story distributed by the Soviet news agency TASS...
While the stylish Raisa, 51, made headlines in the West last December when she accompanied her husband on a trip to Britain, only recently has she begun to enjoy press coverage at home. Over the past month, the nightly TV news program Vremya has three times run footage of the General Secretary's wife. Last week, as she played hostess to visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia, many Soviets seemed more interested in Raisa's comings and goings than in the political and economic results of conversations between Gandhi and Gorbachev. "Raisa...