Bay Area Starts Preparing for Gorbachev Visit in June

From the bucolic grounds of Stanford University to San Francisco’s City Hall, the Bay Area was abuzz with anticipation Tuesday over the distinguished visitor due to arrive here early next month.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will become the first leader of the Soviet Union to visit the Bay Area in 31 years. One day after news of the visit surfaced, academics, local officials and business executives already were gearing up for Gorbachev’s arrival.

Gorbachev’s schedule apparently calls for him to arrive in the Bay Area June 3 after meeting with President Bush in Washington and following a stop in Minneapolis. He plans to go to Stanford for two hours on June 4, and leave later that day.

“He’s the man of the decade and he’s coming to our school,” said Robin Roos, a Stanford freshman from Laguna Beach. “I hear he’s a great speaker, even though I’m not going to be able to understand him.”

Stanford President Donald Kennedy said he received confirmation on Tuesday from Soviet Ambassador Yuri V. Dubinin that Gorbachev would visit the campus. The university was asked to take “the first step” by proposing an agenda.

“There is the possibility that Gorbachev will want to give a public address and we will accommodate him if that is the case,” Kennedy said.

Gorbachev is expected to meet with Stanford and Hoover Institution scholars to discuss such heady topics as economic restructuring, the environment and arms control.

“Obviously, one of the reasons why Stanford is a very attractive place for this very welcome visit is that George Shultz is here,” Kennedy said.

Former Secretary of State Shultz is a professor and fellow at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus. The Hoover Institution has taken a leading role in political thinking, particularly during the 1980s. Several members of President Reagan’s circle of advisers came from the think tank and several have returned to it.

Hoover Fellow Charles Hill noted that several researchers are studying the Soviet Union’s attempted economic restructuring. “It’s a tricky issue and we’ve got people who can offer him Marshall Plan ideas on how to do it.”

In San Francisco, officials had received no word from the Soviets that Gorbachev would be coming. But Scott Shafer, press secretary to San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, said U.S. sources had confirmed that Gorbachev will arrive in San Francisco on June 3, go to Stanford the following day, and leave later that same day.

Given that demonstrations are common in San Francisco, officials were trying to anticipate who might be protesting.

“You might see a right-wing demonstration,” Shafer said. “But since there aren’t a lot of right-wingers in this city, they’d have to import them. . . . He’s just not a good bad guy.”

Californians with roots in the troubled Baltic region welcomed Gorbachev’s visit as an opportunity to educate the Soviet leader about that area’s quest for independence.

“The welcome wagon will be out, definitely,” said Danute Mazeika, of the Baltic American Freedom League. “It’s a very pleasant surprise because it opens the dialogue even more.”

Nikita Khrushchev stayed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel when he visited here in 1958. But Charlotte Maillard-Swig, chief of protocol for San Francisco, said she reserved a block of rooms at the Fairmont on the chance that Gorbachev would stay that the Nob Hill hotel.

“We want to be prepared,” Maillard-Swig said.

The announcement of Gorbachev’s specific itinerary would come from Moscow or the Soviet Embassy in Washington, “not in San Francisco,” said Sergei Z. Aivazian, spokesman for the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco.

That the details of the visit remained fuzzy did not allay the excitement.

“His interest is very strong in coming to San Francisco,” said Harry Orbelian, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and a Soviet immigrant who has met with Gorbachev twice.

Orbelian said the chamber proposed an agenda that had the Soviet president meeting over breakfast and lunch with bankers and industrialists, and attending a reception and dinner in the evening.

“I think it will help tremendously our business,” Orbelian said. He said that “from a standpoint of propaganda,” a visit from the Soviet leader would dispel doubts about San Francisco that linger from last year’s earthquake and emphasize that the city remains a desirable place to conduct international business.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.