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- Gorbachev showed an avid interest in the press. Vladimir Maximov, a writer now living in Paris who worked for a Stavropol Komsomol newspaper in the 1950s, recalls that the young official often visited the paper's offices for a chat. "He would sit down with us in a casual manner," says Maximov. "We would uncork a bottle of wine ((for all his antialcoholism campaigning, Gorbachev still enjoys an occasional drink)) and usually talk politics. Khrushchev's report on the crimes of the Stalinist era had recently appeared. The entire country was still reeling from shock." Maximov and others of Gorbachev's generation, however, remember the late 1950s as an exciting time. Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956 briefly opened the way to a much freer atmosphere. It was a false dawn. Repression resumed a few years later. To this day, however, educated Soviets of Gorbachev's generation, whose political attitudes were formed then and who are now moving into positions of power, sometimes refer to themselves as "children of the 20th Congress."
Gorbachev's interest in the press continued throughout the Stavropol period. As party boss of the area, he often met with regional journalists for talks similar to those he now holds in Moscow with the national press. Unlike other party officials, he would stress that it was not enough for the journalists to write articles that were ideologically correct; they also had to be interesting. "Is anyone reading what you write?" he would ask.
Gorbachev remained open and accessible to his constituents. He usually set out on foot for his job each morning. Stavropolitans quickly learned that they could avoid having to make a formal appointment at Gorbachev's office on Lenin Square by buttonholing him on his walk up Dzerzhinsky Street and discussing their problems then. He also began in Stavropol Krai the walkabouts that were later to cause a national sensation when he continued the practice as General Secretary. On a visit to a village in the Izobilnynsky district, he heard from an indignant mother of six children how the manager of a state store had treated her rudely. The storekeeper was fired. Gorbachev showed some independence from Moscow when he was Stavropol party boss. Turned down for state financing of a permanent circus building, he solicited funds from local organizations and institutions and got the building put up anyway.
The Gorbachevs relieved the monotony of provincial life with several trips to Western Europe, Mikhail traveling as a member of party delegations visiting foreign Communists and Raisa once or twice accompanying him. On the first trip, in 1966, Gorbachev later recalled, the couple rented a Renault and spent several weeks driving 3,400 miles through the length and breadth of France, with a side trip to Italy.