For Gorbachevs, $28,000 Salary Goes a Long Way

Mikhail S. Gorbachev is no millionaire, according to a leading Soviet magazine editor, but no one should be shocked that his wife, Raisa, can afford expensive, fashionable clothes now and then.

As head of state and general secretary of the Communist Party, Gorbachev brings home an annual salary of “something around 18,000 rubles”--or $28,000 at the inflated official exchange rate--Vitaly A. Korotich, editor of Ogonyok, said in an interview Tuesday.

Most Western leaders earn far more, including President Bush, who makes $250,000. But many Soviet citizens, dissatisfied with their own meager salaries, often take great delight in sitting around the dinner table and making snide remarks about the Kremlin leader’s American Express card and Raisa Gorbachev’s haute couture.

“People ask, if Gorbachev doesn’t make so much money, where does his wife get so many dresses?” Korotich said in an earlier interview with a Moldavian newspaper. “But that is not a serious question because Mikhail Sergeyevich is not so badly paid--he gets more than 1,500 rubles a month. Why shouldn’t his wife buy a new dress?”

Korotich said that members of the ruling Politburo are paid between 1,200 and 1,500 rubles a month but that the highest salaries in the government go to the leading generals and marshals in the Defense Ministry, who earn as much as 2,000 rubles a month.

Although such information is not generally published in the Soviet press, Korotich said it is not regarded as a state secret.

“Our leaders get free transport and very often food that is cheaper than ordinary,” Korotich said. “I stand for a position where our chiefs will receive a real salary--maybe as much as what Bush makes--but they will pay for everything.”

Gorbachev’s book, “Perestroika,” published in the United States by Harper and Row, reportedly earned him $600,000 in American royalties. Korotich said the Soviet leader donated the money to the Communist Party.

While Gorbachev’s salary appears low by Western standards, the Soviet leader’s “more than 1,500 rubles a month” is at least seven times the average Soviet salary.

In a society where times are hard, even slight differences in living standards spark bonfires of envy. What is more, unlike ordinary Soviet citizens, the Gorbachevs do not have to stand in line for goods that are scarce.

Gorbachev’s perks of office are far more considerable than his straight pay. They include an apartment in Moscow, a house in the woods outside the city and a vacation place in the Crimea.

But Gorbachev, despite his own penchant for the occasional tailor-made English suit or raffish felt fedora, is decidedly not a member of the Soviet millionaires’ club.

In an article published last year in the labor newspaper Trud, a leading economist said that of the “several thousand” millionaires in the Soviet Union, almost all are either artists and writers, who earn foreign royalties, or mobsters and black marketeers.

Korotich did not say where he got his information on Gorbachev’s finances.