‘Secret Weapon’ : Soviet ‘First Lady’ Charms Parisians

It’s not often that wives of Soviet leaders arrive from Moscow and capture the hearts of Parisians, but Raisa Maximovna Gorbachev has proved a sparkling exception.

She has been pronounced “elegant” by directors of world-famous Paris fashion houses and declared to be the Kremlin’s “secret weapon” in the charm campaign waged by her husband, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, during their four-day trip to France.

Kennedy Visit Recalled

While her husband has commanded the attention of the French government and the French press with arms control proposals, speeches to legislators and a press conference with French President Francois Mitterrand, Raisa Gorbachev’s bright-eyed curiosity and energy have helped her to win headlines on her own as she visited museums and toured the city sights.

It was nearly a quarter-century ago that another First Lady--Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the wife of President John F. Kennedy--wowed Paris with her beauty, clothes sense and fluent French. Kennedy quipped that he was the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy, whose ancestry is French, to Paris.

Raisa Gorbachev has handicaps that did not affect Jacqueline Kennedy. She speaks little French and already is a grandmother, probably about 50 years old, although her exact age is not publicly known. But she does have a flair for fashion and a sprightly manner that seem a remarkable change from the stereotype of dour and dowdy Soviet wives.

“I think she’s a modern woman who is giving a new image to the Russian woman,” said Helene de Ludinghausen, director of the Yves St. Laurent salon, where the Kremlin leader’s wife paid a call.

Designer Pierre Cardin, who also played host to her at his salon, was equally effusive, saying: “She is elegant. . . . She’s very au courant. “ The state-sponsored French radio reported that she had created a “sensation” in Paris.

The object of all this admiring attention is an auburn-haired woman, standing a little over five feet tall, who teaches Marxist philosophy at Moscow University when she is not accompanying her husband on foreign trips.

Unlike the wives of other leaders, she has taken a public role and is often photographed with Gorbachev on state occasions and on trips inside the Soviet Union. Her pretty daughter, Irina, is a medical doctor, and her granddaughter, Oksana, is said to be the apple of Gorbachev’s eye.

Likes Shakespeare

When Raisa Gorbachev went to London last December, before her husband was named the top Soviet leader, she captivated the British by her strong interest in Shakespeare and other giants of English literature.

In Paris, her interest in art and fashion paid off with applause. At the Cardin salon, for example, she appeared to be fascinated by the young, thin mannequins.

“How little do you have to weigh to get into those clothes?” she was quoted as asking one model.

She showed her own fashion taste by favoring tailored suits and long, full circular skirts that fell to just above the ankle. On arrival, she wore a gray pin-striped fitted jacket and a full purple skirt and, defying fashion convention, she appeared in the same outfit, with a different blouse, for morning events the next day.

But she won approving glances with a velvet-trimmed woolen jacket, and she wore a shimmering bronze coat-dress to an evening musical entertainment amid the pomp of Versailles.

According to the French fashion houses she visited, Raisa Gorbachev placed no orders for new clothes while she was in Paris. But there were unconfirmed reports that she left her measurements.

And she came away from St. Laurent’s salon with two small boxes and four shopping bags, described as gifts of an evening bag, scarves and perfume from the proprietor.