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Still more sweeping changes are rumored to be on the way. Pledging to revive the economy and institute a new regime of discipline and hard work, Gorbachev warned in May that "those who do not intend to adjust and who are an obstacle to solving these new tasks must simply get out of the way." He followed up in June with a speech denouncing stodgy production ministries and their ministers. Tougher yet, he cited four of the incompetents by name. Moscow gossip has it that unless the Old Guard can somehow figure out a way to stop him before the Communist Party Congress meeting next February, an event that occurs only once every five years, Gorbachev will push out fully half of the 300 members of the Central Committee and replace them with his own loyalists. The military has not been spared Gorbachev's housecleaning instincts. Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov, 74, has been designated only a candidate member of the Politburo rather than a full member, as his immediate predecessors were, and a number of his subordinates have been replaced. On the other hand, Gorbachev has restored to grace Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, 67, who was removed as chief of staff by Chernenko. Ogarkov has been made operational commander of the Soviet Union's western front. His ideas sometimes clash with mainstream military thinking; he is thought to favor more emphasis on conventional, and less on nuclear, weapons. Says one senior Western diplomat: "The military cannot be too happy with the way things are going."
The image-conscious Gorbachev has repeatedly flashed his smile on Soviet TV, visiting factories and plunging into street crowds to deliver off-the-cuff speeches. In Leningrad, a woman shouted to him, "Just get close to the people and they won't let you down." As the throng pressed in on him, Gorbachev shot back, "Can I get any closer?" In Kiev, he suffered a rare public slip of the tongue, twice referring to the country he leads as "Russia" before correcting himself to say "the Soviet Union, as we now call it, and as it in fact is." The mistake must have raised eyebrows and annoyed Georgians, Latvians, Uzbeks and Tatars as well as the Ukrainians he was addressing, but it ran on Soviet TV uncensored.
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 Soviet citizens for the first time in years a kind of First Family to admire. However, Gorbachev's son-in-law, a doctor, remains mostly unseen.
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, kid.' "