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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 15, 1985
wore a dark suit one day, an executive pin-stripe with satin
blouse the next,•••and, at a Soviet Embassy reception, a cream
satin two-piece dress, gold lame sandals with chain straps and
pearl-drop earrings.
It was a measure of Gorbachev's success
t.hat he managed to generate excitement without diverging one whit
from standard Kremlin lines••••
"A Red Star Rises in the East," declared The Sunday Times of Lon
don over a profile of Gorbachev. But it was Prime Minister Mar
garet Thatcher who provided the most fitting epitaph to the
visit. "I like Mr. Gorbachev," said she. "We can do business to
gether."•••
Who is the real Gorbachev?••• Kremlinologists are wary of spot
ting another "liberal" in the style of the late Yuri
v.
Andropov,
and the debate over the real Gorbachev has gone back and forth.
But if the outlines of the man remain a bit fuzzy still, what has
emerged with startling clarity is that this stocky, balding
peasant's son from southern Russia, with his pleasant style and
calm face, has achieved� of the most dizzying rises in the
annals of modern Soviet politics.
A scant three years ago, he was known to the West, where known at
all, largely as the youngster of the Politburo, a farm boy two
decades younger than most of his comrades.... Yet by the time
Chernenko came to power, Gorbachev was the acknowledged second in
command of the Soviet Communist Party, an enormously powerful
secretary charged with ideology, party cadres and most of the
economy, as well, apparently, as agriculture. He has become the
rallying point for an increasingly vocal portion of the white
collar elite that is convinced that the Soviet Union's solvency
and credibility� at peril without a thorough overhaul of the
economy••••
At a meeting of party workers last December, Gorbachev spelled
out his program in unusually clear terms: "We will have to carry
out profound transformations in the economy and in the entire
system of social relations•••• Only an intensive, highly devel
oped economy can guarantee the consolidation of the country's
positions in the international arena, can permit the country to
enter the new millennium as a great and flourishing state."
There is something in the notion of a young, educated and smooth
leader advocating change and lambasting the bureaucracy that the
West finds irresistible•••• Law school graduate, successful poli
tician, foe of bloated bureaucracies and inefficiency, an advo
cate of change--these are elements dear to a Western heart••••
There is•••the impression among Russians that he lacks an element
of ruthlessness. His rise, after all, was due more to patronage
than to brute force. Suslov [ Mikhail A. Suslov, the powerful
ideologue and kingmaker in Brezhnev's Kremlin) and Andropov may
have launched him into an orbit far higher than he could have
achieved on his own•••• What he does have, probably to a greater
degree than any previous candidate for Soviet power, is a plat
form. He is identified, more closely than any member of the