He has been described by those who have met him as bright, incisive, low-key and polite. He is a sometimes brisk-mannered man who asks lots of questions and soaks up detail. His style, so different from the stolid, intensely private behavior of most Soviet leaders, was captured at a Moscow polling station during last month's national elections. There, under the glare of television lights, stood Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead of keeping his family away from the spotlight, he had brought along his wife Raisa, 52, their daughter Irina and granddaughter Oksana. After sealing his ballot, Gorbachev carefully placed it in the box. When photographers asked him to repeat the scene, he declined, jocularly noting he was allowed to vote only once.
It was not the first time that Gorbachev had displayed such public affability. During a visit to Britain in December, he delighted his hosts with his banter. On a tour of the British Museum, where Karl Marx wrote part of Das Kapital, he mused, "If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum." Later, as photographers clicked away, Gorbachev pleaded for a respite: "Comrades, economize your supplies." Yet the British also found Gorbachev a cool, reflective man quite capable of a steely riposte. When a Conservative Member of Parliament asked about the persecution of religious minorities in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev shot back: "You govern your society and you leave us to govern ours." The visitor's annoyance, the M.P. recalled, was "electrifying."
Such incidents are being closely examined for what they reveal about Gorbachev, a stocky, balding man with a wine-colored birthmark on his forehead.* Trained as a lawyer, he is the first Soviet leader born after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the best educated since Lenin. His speech underscores his upbringing: his mastery of Russian grammar is superior to that of most of his Kremlin predecessors. He is the exemplar of the New Guard, which represents a generation raised after the Stalinist horrors and for which the catastrophe of World War II is an adolescent memory. Though much about Gorbachev remains a mystery, his
rapid rise through party ranks suggests an adroit politician who has been able to advance under leaders as different in style as Brezhnev and Andropov.
Though Gorbachev may exhibit a more amiable personality than his predecessors, there is no reason to doubt that he is cut from the same ideological cloth. Despite his relative youth, he has not openly identified with the aspirations of Soviet citizens under age 30, who now make up half the population. His speeches at home often ring with the same doctrinaire phraseology as those of his most orthodox Politburo colleagues. Totally a product of his party's system, Gorbachev flourished by avoiding risks, not by taking them.
What is different about Gorbachev is his ability to steer away from political cant when talking with Westerners. He is also able to mask his feelings when the occasion calls for it. When French President Francois Mitterrand mentioned Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov during a state banquet in the Kremlin last June, Konstantin Chernenko and Andrei Gromyko looked annoyed, but Gorbachev betrayed no emotion. "He has great control," said a French diplomat. "He was the only one who did not show anything."