The Mikhail Gorbachev I met: fêted abroad, controversial at home
Gorbachev #Gorbachev
Suddenly, the news mattered. For years, during the dozy days of Brezhnev, Russians would ignore Vremya, the nine o’clock news programme, with its stultifying statistics of tractor production and grain harvests. But with Gorbachev in power, you never knew what would come next.
Maybe there would be a decision to rehabilitate some of the old Bolsheviks, shot by Stalin. Maybe there would be a discussion on what happened to the Tsar, another taboo subject. Or Russians would learn that Andrei Sakharov, the dissident languishing in internal exile in Gorki, had been phoned by Gorbachev and told he was free.
It was an exhilarating time. But the only feasts were for the mind. There wasn’t much for the body. The shops were almost all empty.