Gorbachev Prepares Stage for Comeback

Mikhail Gorbachev is on the comeback trail.After rare public appearances in his native Russia over the past two and a half years, the former Soviet president this week has waged a publicity blitz to defend his legacy. And in an interview published Thursday, he again hinted that he may run for president in 1996."I am now giving very serious thought to this," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "I don't rule it out, but the decision has not been made."Gorbachev has already started staging a remarkable return from the political dead, testifying Tuesday before the State Duma's committee on the Commonwealth of Independent States concerning relations between the former Soviet republics.On Thursday, he appeared in court as a witness in the trial of General Valentin Varennikov for his part in the attempted coup of August 1991."He has decided to appear at this particular time in court, in public and in the media to let his voice be heard and his positions known," said Vladimir Turmarken, a spokesman for Gorbachev. "It's an extraordinarily important moment in the political life of Russia."Although Gorbachev has never hidden a desire to regain power, his maneuvering of the past week is unusual in the extensive media coverage it has attracted. His interview in Nezavisimaya Gazeta was splashed over the front page for two consecutive days, and his Thursday appearance in the Supreme Court was the top story on the evening news and the centerpiece of Friday's Izvestia.Still, for many Russians, Gorbachev has been politically irrelevant ever since he relinquished power as the Soviet Union collapsed on Dec. 25, 1991. For a few hundred pro-Communist demonstrators who swore at Gorbachev outside the courthouse Thursday, he is even worse, a demon whose policies led to the collapse of Soviet Communism. One women even dragged out an old poster portraying Gorbachev as Adolf Hitler.Yet Gorbachev, 63, who recently completed his memoirs, envisages himself and his future differently."He sees himself as the father of Russian democracy and he's worried that democracy is going down the drain," said Stephen Cohen, a leading Russian expert to whom Gorbachev gave a five-hour interview two weeks ago. "If you feel that you're a historic figure that didn't get a chance to finish your work, are you going to go quietly into history if you still have your health?"Polls show that Gorbachev has minimal popular support nationwide and almost all Russian observers say he has virtually no chance of regaining power. Yet Gorbachev, ever the optimist, appears to hope that a more public presence may be sufficient to win back his reputation. When the former president walked with Cohen in the Sparrow Hills late last month, he was quickly surrounded by young people, the Princeton University professor said. "They began to say how much they admired him and how much they hoped he would become a candidate; he was very happy with that," Cohen said. "He takes that as evidence that among the young generation he has support."Yet in Nezavisimaya Gazeta's latest monthly rating of Russia's most popular politicians, Gorbachev, now head of the Gorbachev Foundation and of the environmental International Green Cross, was 85th on the list of 100, his overall score a bit down from May.With such a cold shoulder from his fellow citizens, Gorbachev has typically used his foreign travels to attack his rival Boris Yeltsin and the current Russian policies. Now, he plans to be more visible in Russia as well, his spokesman said.His political strategy lies in creating "a democratic alternative to this regime, because it is drifting in the wrong direction," he said in the Nezavisimaya interview. Such a force would not be centered around a single political personality, but rather would be an amalgamation of different groups.Until such a group comes together, Gorbachev appears focused on salvaging his reputation. On Thursday, his forum was the trial of Varennikov, the Soviet Union's former deputy minister of defense and the only 1991 coup participant to refuse parliament's amnesty against treason charges.