Raisa Gorbachev Best Ambassador for Soviets, Finnish Paper Says

Raisa Gorbachev has delighted crowds in Finland with an elegance that has made her a controversial figure at home.

Accompanying her husband, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, on a three-day state visit to Finland, the Soviet first lady drew admiration on every stop of her own special schedule--a museum, a huge abstract sculpture, a school and a cheese factory.

“The Soviet Union’s secret weapon has conquered Helsinki . . . (and) is their best ambassador,” the Helsinki newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet said.

More than 1,000 people mixed calls of “Gorba, Gorba” and “Raisa, Raisa” when Raisa Gorbachev, dressed in pinstriped skirt and jacket and a purple leather coat, joined her husband on the balcony of the presidential palace shortly after their arrival in Helsinki on Wednesday.

She mingled with a rain-soaked crowd on a visit to a modernist sculpture commemorating Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius. “Dobry dyen (Good day),” she said, and shook hands with bystanders while bodyguards fought in vain to hold off a human wave of photographers and reporters.

Visiting a 750-pupil school that teaches in both Finnish and Russian, she immediately took one pupil, 9-year-old Mikko Kupari, to stay with her throughout the 90-minute visit.

Teachers insisted that she selected Kupari because he produced the loudest greeting of the flag-waving children lined up to welcome her. “She was a very kind lady, very nice,” Mikko told reporters.