Smiling Gorbachev Is Back in View After Long Absence

After seven weeks out of public view and with the Soviet capital buzzing about his long absence, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev resurfaced Tuesday for a Kremlin meeting with a French delegation.

The 56-year-old Communist Party chief was last seen in public Aug. 7, when he received a group of American teachers of the Russian language in Moscow. His whereabouts was a main topic of conversation among foreigners and their Soviet contacts.

His prolonged absence prompted reports by some foreign newspapers that either he or his wife, Raisa, were ailing. Soviet officials repeatedly said Gorbachev was on vacation.

Soviet television broadcast an 80-minute report on the meeting with the French group during its evening news program, showing a smiling, tanned Gorbachev seated in the Kremlin’s Sverdlov Hall.

In comments distributed by the official Tass agency but not broadcast on television, Gorbachev spoke of his absence.

“Some people think that I’ve been on vacation too long,” he was quoted as saying. “I officially inform you that I was on vacation from Aug. 24 until Sept. 24.”

Gorbachev met Tuesday with a group of 370 French politicians, clergymen, cultural figures and other members of the “Initiative ‘87” visit to Moscow.

French television, which had a cameraman and correspondent present during a photo session, showed Gorbachev smiling and gesturing as he listened to a speech by the delegation leader, former Socialist Premier Pierre Mauroy.

Mauroy told reporters after the two-hour meeting that Gorbachev seemed “in excellent health and in good form.”

He also reported the Soviet leader remarked that he had been working on a book during his vacation.

Reporters at the picture-taking said Gorbachev apparently was referring to a book scheduled to be published simultaneously this fall in the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and Britain.

Harper & Row, the U.S. publishing house, announced last week that it will print Gorbachev’s book, “Perestroika: Our Hopes for Our Country and the World.”

Perestroika, the Russian word for restructuring, has more widely been used to describe the changes that have occurred in the Soviet Union since Gorbachev came to power in March, 1985.

Last week, the West German newspaper Bild reported without attribution that Gorbachev had been stricken by food poisoning in what might have been an assassination attempt.

The Swedish newspaper Expressen said Sunday that Raisa Gorbachev had been seriously ill with complications after an appendectomy.