Don’t Count Me Out, Gorbachev Says : Russia: Former Soviet president declares he has no intention of retiring from politics.

Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Friday that he has no intention of retiring from public life and hinted that he, like the late French President Charles de Gaulle, will have a second political life.

“De Gaulle returned to political life at 68--I still have seven years left,” Gorbachev said playfully.

“I am often asked whether I am going to return to the sphere of politics,” added Gorbachev, looking tan and robust four months after he was forced out of his post. “First of all, I never left this sphere. Moreover, it would be immoral on my part (to leave). How can I abandon what I started when the stakes are higher than life?”

Gorbachev seemed to thoroughly enjoy being in the limelight during the two-hour press conference, his first in Moscow since his resignation last Christmas.

He all but gloated about the extent to which things have worsened since he left office, and roared in anger over questions about his role in the alleged financial crimes of the former Communist Party, which he headed. And he smiled with delight when a young Russian reporter, instead of asking a question, declared that no matter what their elders say, the youth love Gorbachev because he was the one who gave them rock music.

When pressed about testimony he has given the prosecutor’s office for an investigation into the alleged misuse of the Communist Party’s funds, Gorbachev showed righteous anger.

“Why do they forget what I contributed to the termination of the adventurous war in Afghanistan and of the Cold War, and to arms reductions?” Gorbachev said, his face flushed.

This feeling of being underappreciated at home seems to have become a recurrent theme for Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the role he played in ending the Cold War between the East and West but lost the love of his own people.

Speaking to a few reporters after the news conference, he imagined with irony how the political leaders of the Soviet republics felt when they created the Commonwealth of Independent States, which virtually left him without a job.

“They thought, ‘How good it will be without Gorbachev!’ ” the former Kremlin chief said with a pained expression. “Now you see the result. They don’t even know what to do with (the Commonwealth).”

Gorbachev expressed his doubts about the longevity of the loose alliance of 11 of the 15 former Soviet republics: “I do not believe in the vitality of the Commonwealth.”

But he stressed that the former Soviet republics, which have been intertwined economically and politically for so long, must remain together. He made it clear that he still thinks a federation, like the one he tried to forge, would be the most successful alliance.

He expressed special concern that since the Soviet Union dissolved, new tensions have grown between Russia and Ukraine over the fate of the Black Sea Fleet and violence has intensified in areas of ethnic conflict around the Commonwealth.

“I am very sorry that everything I predicted started coming true within two weeks,” he said.

Gorbachev also criticized his longtime rival, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, by saying that the “powerful blows” to the people have been the “flagrant mistakes in the economic reforms.”

Despite his clear message that he would do a better job if he were in power, Gorbachev insisted that he has no plans yet to run for any particular office. In fact, his affable manner and healthy looks indicated that he is enjoying his new life running his own Moscow-based think tank, the Gorbachev Foundation, traveling abroad and writing prolifically. He is scheduled to travel across the United States, from West to East, next month.