We knew he was going to be different. We did not know he was going to be that different. Last week he marked only his 28th month on the job, yet already his name is being used to describe a new era. That may be premature, but it conveys the sense among citizens and observers of the Soviet Union that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, 56, is more than just the supreme leader of a vast, heavily armed country: he also represents the potential for dramatic change.
At first Gorbachev seemed new and interesting because of his vigor. That alone distinguished him from his doddering predecessors, whose artificial life-support systems and terminal "colds" were gruesome metaphors for the decrepitude of the system. At last the Soviet Union had a leader who was younger than the state itself.
In Washington, analysts and policymakers alike have yet to figure out what to make of Gorbachev or how to deal with him. Americans had long since grown used to a Soviet adversary who seemed most comfortable sitting on a block of ice, scowling and saying nyet in response to U.S. initiatives. Now the ice is melting. The Kremlin has been making diplomatic and arms-control proposals faster than the White House can reject them. Having met twice with Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev has, for the moment at least, managed to seize control of the timing and agenda for a possible third encounter later this year.
Gorbachev needs a respite from all-out competition with the West in order to get on with his program. He wants to transform the Soviet Union from a muscle- bound but backward empire into a modern state able to hold its own in the global marketplace of goods and ideas. The U.S.S.R., says Gorbachev, must become a "real superpower." Implicit in that phrase is a stunning confession: take away its 3.7 million men under arms and its 25,000-odd nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union would be a Third World country. There is a note of alarm, even shame, and a growing tone of impatience in the way he talks about the society and economy over which he presides. A new specter haunts the land of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the specter of apostasy imposed from above. What Gorbachev calls a "revolution" is to be accomplished by the beginning of the 21st century, and he seems to have every intention of being around, and in power, to pronounce it a success.
There is reason to wish him well, but also reason for skepticism. More often than not, the legacy of Russian and Soviet reformers has been reaction. Thaws have turned to chills. So far, much of the Gorbachev phenomenon is words. Andrei Gromyko, the longtime Foreign Minister who two years ago became the country's largely ceremonial President, used to say there is a big difference between words and deeds. Yet in a country where one can be sent to the Gulag for saying the wrong thing, words are deeds. In a closed, hidebound dictatorship, Gorbachev's slogans of openness, restructuring and democratization are either particularly cynical or particularly significant. It is not yet clear which.