Mikhail Gorbachev began work as a deputy in the ideological section of the Stavropol City Komsomol Committee, his office a windowless middle room. It was a lowly position for a graduate of the law faculty of Moscow University, yet all those who worked with him say he had a certain aura - "untouchable, not like a common guy" - and his work habits became legendary.
Rising swiftly as a professional propagandist, he was only 29 when he became Komsomol leader for the whole territory. Gorbachev then attached himself to Fyodor Kulakov, first secretary of Stavropol, an ambitious, hands-on party boss who was determined to turn the region into an agricultural success. The young Gorbachev stuck close to this mentor for the next 18 years, paralleling Kulakov's ambitious ascent through the hierarchy.A year before his 40th birthday, Gorbachev arrived on the national scene. Kulakov recommended he replace him as first secretary of Stavropol, which made the boy from Privolnoye one of the hundred or so territorial party bosses who play a crucial role in deciding who runs the country.
From 1970 to 1978, Gorbachev was by all accounts an unusually popular party chief. He was known as reasonable, good-tempered, approachable, inspiring those who worked for him. During the short walk from the first secretary's residence on Dzerzhinsky Street to the monolith of party headquarters, he was often buttonholed by citizens, and he always stopped to listen.
The distance between Moscow and a provincial capital is measured not in kilometers but in degrees of safety; throughout Russian history the farther one was from the czar, the more creative one dared to be. Gorbachev used his distant stage well, performing experiments that flew in the face of orthodoxy.
He had many quarrels with the chairman of agriculture for the Russian Republic, the boss back at "central," as Moscow is known in the provinces. "He took on the struggle himself and fought over issues," remembers Grigori Gorlov, a longtime family friend. But he always backed up his position with a barrage of facts. It wasn't easy to get reliable data; he had to coax it out of his deputies by promising to protect them, persuading them to work hard, to stay with him until 9 or 10 in the evening. He would pick out the most clever and energetic for advancement; the deadwood party workers got a year or two to prove themselves and then - out.
Gorbachev's position as boss of Mineralyne Vody, a highly desirable resort-spa region, made him the maitre d' of one of Russia's most exclusive pleasure grounds. Operating in this relaxed atmosphere, Gorbachev could cater to the every whim of Moscow's top brass.
"To preside over such a resort area means you can do all sorts of favors for the big shots," according to U.S. Sovietologist Mark Palmer. "You can provide women, booze, better housing, and not only for the man himself but for his `mafia' - his cousins, his mistresses, etc. - because everything in the Soviet Union is done through connections, mafias, `large clans.' "
Andrei Brezhnev, 28-year-old grandson of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, confirms this view: "There are two mafias here, the criminal mafia and the government mafia. They have their own rules, their own system." He adds, "Nothing has changed."
"What you're measured by is whether you're good at this connection business," says Palmer. "Gorbachev's genius as a young party secretary was to be good at making people feel comfortable, flattering them, and being the fixer for (Yuri) Andropov and (Mikhail) Suslov, Brezhnev's chief of ideology."
The ruthless Suslov, who reigned as first secretary of Stavropol when Gorbachev was a boy, had risen under Stalin by wiping out his rivals with mass arrests of the party leadership of entire regions. Most stayed away from this ruggedly handsome, frightening man, but Gorbachev courted him the same way he seduced one powerful party boss after another. "Without question," intones Dmitri Golovanov, "without question. Otherwise, he would have been destroyed."
Andropov, then head of the KGB, led a second group, also rising in party leadership. Kulakov, Gorbachev's patron, belonged to the Andropov mafia, while Suslov belonged to Brezhnev's. Suslov and Andropov were on opposing sides of what would ultimately be a fatal power struggle.
"When Andropov met Gorbachev, I think he was delighted with him," says Dmitri Golovanov, the son of a prominent newspaper editor. "Gorbachev's intellect was, of course, much higher than average. He was much younger. Andropov saw in him simply a fine, honest young man. They had a father-son relationship."
Gorbachev always spoke of the secret-police chief with respect. He found Andropov's artistic interests and living habits more congenial than those of his previous surrogate fathers. Andropov was known within the party elite as clean-living and modest in his tastes. He had a poetic side (although he persecuted writers) and delighted in chumming around with the literate Gorbachev and his cultured wife. Perhaps most important in the forging of this political alliance, Andropov was just like Gorbachev philosophically - "a man who knew the true situation and who was not afraid to draw attention to the gap between the self-comforting fantasies of Soviet propaganda and the dismal reality of Soviet life," according to "Comrade Chairman" by Richard Owen.
Andropov was not a professional intelligence chief, says Golovanov; he was more of a politician. His sights were set on tearing down the corrupt Brezhnev clan, and he had the power of the KGB files and secret-police network to attempt it.
In a despotic triangle, only one man had the power to admit young apparatachiks into the land of kings. In September 1978, Andropov summoned Gorbachev to the Mineralnye Voda train station to meet Chairman Brezhnev and his yes-man, Konstantin Chernenko, who had planned a quick stop at the spa on their way back from Baku. Brezhnev also was stopping to look over territorial chiefs.
Sergei Medunov, the first secretary of neighboring Krasnodar, was much closer to Brezhnev and was on the take. Grigori Romanov, a rival from Leningrad, had got publicly drunk on a trip to Finland, and Gorbachev had tried to discredit him for it. But drunkenness and dishonesty were de rigueur in the Brezhnev clan. It was Gorbachev's way of life that was suspicious. It would be a make-or-break performance for the first secretary of Stavropol.
Gorbachev sat with Andropov in the second-floor waiting hall. When the two party big shots disembarked from their private carriage to face the political father-son team, Gorbachev gave an account of his territory's record harvest. Brezhnev's face remained impassive.
Two months later the news was public: Gorbachev had been "elected" secretary of the Central Committee. His was the last name on the list - but he was finally on his way to Moscow.
Having stayed on the good side of two giants who could have crushed him between them, Gorbachev now reaped his reward. It was Suslov who brought Gorbachev to Moscow and then acted as his protector. But when Andropov's corruption probe fatally punctured the Brezhnev cocoon, Suslov died. And after Brezhnev died in November 1982, Andropov took power.
Together he and Gorbachev purged a fifth of the regional first secretaries and nine of 23 Central Committee department heads. According to the New York Times, "They cracked down on corrupt officials and on laggard workers and launched experiments to inject more incentives into industry and agriculture."
When Kremlin doctors told Andropov he might have only five years to live, he must have decided to vest Gorbachev with the power to finish the job. Within a year of becoming general secretary, Andropov lay in his hospital bed, having turned over the administration of economic affairs to his surrogate son.
"My God, what did they think they were doing!" Gorbachev exclaimed when he was first given a look at the country's books, according to Nickolai Shishlin, consultant to the Central Committee. "I should go back to the provinces now."
In the end, Gorbachev had the dying Andropov's proxy to run the whole country. Scrambling for solutions, he asked to be received by the prime minister, Nikolai Tikhonov. For three hours the two men looked through the financial records. Shaken, Gorbachev demanded that the farmers' debts be forgiven. "Let's start modernizing. We must change something."
When Andropov died, the old guard briefly reclaimed power by electing the ossified Chernenko, who served as general secretary for a year before he, too, died. Again, Gorbachev had to hold his zeal in check.
Each time his former secretary Georgi Starshikov, who had been Gorbachev's deputy in Stavropol, traveled to Moscow and saw him, Gorbachev would shake his head and moan, "We have strayed so far; it's a pity - we must lead our country back on track."
Gorbachev's life story illuminates some of his behavior as a statesman. Here is a highly intelligent and prodigiously energetic person who grew up within the repressive Stalinist system, where family and ideals were repeatedly betrayed. He was aware of it, he quarreled with it, but he didn't fight it and end up in a gulag. What Gorbachev brought to that isolated and treacherous environment was an incredible mission to know and the patience to wait for his moment. When he finally assumed national leadership, he was in no way ignorant of the full state of affairs. Yet he was radicalized slowly, incrementally.
"I have lived three lifetimes since I took over in 1985," Gorbachev acknowledged to a Moscow friend recently. "I had the feeling he thought he could solve everything quickly," says Dmitri Golovanov, who, as producer of the nightly news show "Vremya," met Gorbachev shortly after he became general secretary. "He thought if he could turn technological trends around, he would get full support. That was romantic."
His closest adviser since he came to power, Aleksandr Yakovlev, admits they were romantic about perestroika in 1985. They fully believed that all they had to do was tell people they are free to do what they wish, write what they wish, say what they wish, and that this freedom would give birth to a new era of exploratory, energetic self-starters.
But Gorbachev is an anomalous personality in Soviet society. He is a congenital optimist, where pessimism historically shadows the Russian soul. He is adventurous, full of ideas and initiative, where the reflexes of most Russians are more passive. He is a normal leader in a society still abnormal.
(c) 1990, Gail Sheehy (adapted from an article that first appeared in Vanity Fair)
Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate