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...