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I said, "I implore you to look one more time at the question of releasing people convicted for their beliefs. It's a matter of justice. It's vitally important for our country, for international trust, for peace and for you and the success of your program."
Gorbachev made a noncommittal reply. I said, "Thank you again. Goodbye." (Contrary to the demands of protocol, I brought the conversation to a close, not Gorbachev. I must have felt under stress and perhaps subconsciously feared that I might say too much.) Gorbachev had little choice, so he said, "Goodbye."
On the morning of Dec. 23 we stepped off the train at Moscow's Yaroslavl Station onto a platform teeming with reporters. It took me 40 minutes to make my way through the crowd. Hundreds of flashbulbs blinded me and microphones were continually thrust into my face as I tried to respond to the barrage of questions. The whole scene offered a preview of the hurly-burly life that now awaited us.
Lusia and I were almost buried under the load of the first few months in Moscow. I spent time preparing written responses for almost all major interviews. People passed through the house endlessly. Lusia cooked for a whole crowd. Long after midnight, it was not uncommon to find her, despite her heart attacks and her bypasses, mopping the landing -- our building is self- service -- and me still at work on a statement.
Gorbachev: A Cry for Help
One subject that came up in every interview was my attitude toward Gorbachev and perestroika. In 1985, while still confined in Semashko Hospital, I watched one of Gorbachev's early television appearances, and I told my roommates, "It looks as if our country's lucky. We've got an intelligent leader." My initial, positive reaction has remained basically unchanged. Gorbachev, like Khrushchev, is an extraordinary personality who has managed to break free of the limits customarily respected by the party bureaucracy. What explains the inconsistencies and half measures of the new course? The main stumbling block is the inertia of a gigantic system, the resistance, passive and active, of the innumerable bureaucratic and ideological windbags. Most of them will be out of a job if there is a real perestroika. Gorbachev has spoken of this bureaucratic resistance in some speeches, and it sounds like a cry for help.
But there's more to it than that. The old system, for all its drawbacks, worked. And people had grown used to the old system, which at least guaranteed a certain minimal standard of living. Who knows what the new one will bring? And lastly, Gorbachev and his close associates themselves may still not be completely free of the prejudices and dogmas of the system they wish to reform.