(11 of 15)
Even so, he had opposition. Grigori Romanov, the hard-line former Leningrad party boss who was once thought to be Gorbachev's chief rival, had apparently given up on winning the top job for himself. But at the Politburo session called immediately after Chernenko's death, Romanov reportedly tried a stop- Gorbachev maneuver, nominating Moscow Party Boss Viktor Grishin for General Secretary. By some accounts, however, KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov hinted that his agency had compiled dossiers on corruption in the Moscow party apparatus that could be highly embarrassing to Grishin. (Chebrikov was then a candidate member of the Politburo; he has since moved up to full membership.) Andrei Gromyko, then Foreign Minister, carried the day with a nominating speech for Gorbachev during which he coined the now celebrated remark, "This man has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth." Gromyko's speech was surprising in two respects: it appears to have been improvised, and it contained none of the lengthy recitation of the hero's accomplishments traditional on such occasions. Gromyko appeared to be saying: this man has not really done all that much yet, but he is still the best we have.
Gorbachev had been in power only a month when he roamed around the industrial Proletarsky district of Moscow, visiting supermarkets, chatting with workers at the Likhachyov truck factory, discussing computer training with teachers at School No. 514 and nurses' pay with the staff of City Hospital No. 53. He even dropped into a young couple's apartment for tea. That was the first of the walkabouts that have taken him, sometimes accompanied by Raisa, from Murmansk in the north to Kamchatka on the shores of the Pacific. On several of his tours he has displayed an easy informality and an almost impish distaste for ceremonial oratory. Entering the hall of the Starnikovsky Farm near Moscow to talk to livestock breeders last summer, he veered away from the row of seats on the tribunal and perched on the edge of the table so that he could be closer to the crowd. In October, at the Baltic Shipyards in Leningrad, a spokesman for the workers began a monotone welcoming speech expressing a wish that perestroika would develop even faster. Gorbachev interrupted with playful cries of "Davai! Davai!" (Let's go to it!), drawing a big laugh from the crowd.
Gorbachev has an apartment in central Moscow, but lives most of the time in a closed and guarded area of single-family mansions on the western outskirts of the city. From there he is driven downtown daily at 9 a.m. in a four-ZIL motorcade: one car for himself; two for aides and bodyguards, and a heavily curtained vehicle bristling with antennas that is assumed to carry the coding equipment for launching nuclear weapons. His main office is on the fifth floor of the Central Committee headquarters, a quarter of a mile from the Kremlin; he also maintains an office in a building just behind the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall, but he uses it mostly to receive visitors. He usually returns home at about 6 p.m. in another motorcade. Extra traffic police are stationed along Kutuzovsky Prospekt to clear the central lanes for the four limousines. He stays downtown late only when there is some special ceremonial function or when, as often happens, the regular Thursday Politburo meeting runs into the evening.