Reporter’s Notebook : Gorbachev Exposes Sole, Recites Parable

When Soviet officials travel to Western countries, they usually go on shopping sprees as well. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev apparently is no exception. When he appeared at a news conference Friday with French President Francois Mitterand, he was wearing gray, loafer-like shoes of supple leather that were so new a price tag could be seen on the sole of one shoe.

The new Soviet “charm offensive” has turned some once-dour officials into joke-telling happy talkers. Leonid F. Zamyatin, chief of the Communist Party Central Committee’s International Information Department, quipped to reporters at a briefing: “I have my principles, but if you don’t agree with them, I have other principles.”

At his session with reporters, Gorbachev recalled the story about an old man, his young son and their donkey. When villagers criticized the old man for riding the donkey, he let his son ride. But when the criticism continued for letting the old man walk, Gorbachev recalled, both father and son wound up carrying the donkey. His apparent point: American officials are inconsistent critics, but the Soviets are not going to carry any donkeys.

French security for Gorbachev’s four-day visit was extremely tight. Thousands of police officers were deployed along the routes followed by his motorcade, and demonstrations were banned while he was in Paris. One morning, the entire Champs Elysees was cleared from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde for Gorbachev’s motorcade.

The French term for Gorbachev is le numero un Sovietique, translated as the Soviet No. 1. Although he is not technically a head of state, he has been treated as one by everyone from Mitterrand on down. Even so, a Soviet briefing on Gorbachev’s new arms control proposals was shunted to a tiny basement room because the main hall was occupied by a French government news conference on sexual harassment.

The French Communist Party, despite occasional moments of tension, considers itself close to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. French Communist Party Secretary General Georges Marchais could not keep from making an unscheduled visit to the Lenin museum--a shrine of communism--when Gorbachev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, made a stop there on Friday afternoon. Gorbachev kissed Marchais on both cheeks.

The museum is located in the small apartment that V.I. Lenin occupied in exile from 1909 to 1912, while plotting the overthrow of the Russian czar. When Gorbachev showed up, a group of French Communists stood outside the apartment building, shouting, “Long Live the Soviet Union.” Asked how he felt, Gorbachev replied, “Fine. Especially here.”

Gorbachev probably did not understand the incident that provoked the most laughter at his joint news conference Friday with Mitterrand. Christine Ockrent, who resigned a few months ago as the most popular and influential news anchor on French television to protest threatened interference by the Mitterrand government in news coverage, was covering the conference for a foreign news organization. When Ockrent stood to ask a question and matter-of-factly identified herself as “Christine Ockrent, Radio Canada,” the scores of French journalists there burst into laughter. Even Mitterrand smiled.

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