Gorbachev Rides Crest : Ex-Soviet Leader Came, Saw, Conquered California

He dined with Hollywood stars and saw his first surfer. He grazed on a watercress salad, sipped a Napa Chardonnay and even donned a Stetson for a backcountry Jeep ride near Santa Barbara.

Mikhail Gorbachev got the California treatment last week, and California responded as if he were a dear old friend.

“I think he’s awesome,” Kathy McGuire of San Francisco gushed in a remark heard often during Gorbachev’s whistle-stop tour of the Golden State. “I wish he were a U.S. citizen so I could write him in for President.”

Bidding California adieu, the ex-Soviet leader flew East on Sunday, ending six frenetic days of Gorbymania that infected cities as distinct as Simi Valley and San Francisco.

For a political has-been nudged from power and viewed with disdain by his own people, the rapturous reception was remarkable. It was also a bit peculiar, given that the erstwhile Communist Party chief was here to mimic a time-worn capitalist tradition: fund raising.

Gorbachev passed the hat at $1,000-a-plate dinners, dashed about on a corporate jet called the “Capitalist Tool” and plugged his soon-to-be published memoirs--twice--during a speech at Stanford University.

But Californians seemed to find his cause noble and his motives pure, and they turned out by the thousands to wish him well.

“He’s my hero,” declared corporate pilot Bill Bathel, who watched with his family and 300 others as Gorbachev’s flight from Moscow arrived in Santa Barbara May 2. “I deal with celebrities all the time, and I wouldn’t walk across the street for any of them. But Micky Gorbachev, he’s different.”

Only a few, it seemed, were immune to the Russian’s resonant voice, broad peasant’s face and telegenic smile. In San Francisco, a passionate young Trotskyite lamented that Gorbachev had seemingly turned his back on Communist ideals to beg for handouts from America’s rich and famous.

At Stanford University, several students wearing T-shirts reading “Mao More Than Ever” interrupted a Gorbachev speech with chants of “Long Live Lenin.”

And, in Ventura County, a group of John Birchers held a protest to air a much different message: that Gorbachev--who has never renounced socialism and defends the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution--is orchestrating a Communist plot to catch an unsuspecting United States off guard. “Send Gorby to the Gulag,” recommended one of their signs.

But these contrary voices were drowned out by the giddy babble of Gorbachev rooters, who declared him a charismatic visionary in the league of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Such heady praise wowed Vladimir Stepanov, a cameraman filming the tour for a Moscow station that serves the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

“I see a sea of people here--just for Gorbachev,” Stepanov exclaimed, clearly stunned that 4,300 San Franciscans would pay $40 to hear the ex-statesman speak at a Marriott Hotel. “I must tell you, the situation for him is much more unhappy at home.”

It is Gorbachev’s hope that Americans will convert their fondness for him into hard currency. The former president, who resigned Dec. 25 after a failed coup hastened the disintegration of the Soviet Union, is on a 10-city, two-week U.S. tour to raise money for his fledgling think tank, the Moscow-based Gorbachev Foundation.

Gorbachev arrived Sunday in Atlanta, and met privately with former President Jimmy Carter. Among the stops still to come on his punishing itinerary are an address to a joint session of Congress, dinner with President Bush at the White House and a visit to the New York Stock Exchange. Gorbachev, his wife, Raisa, and their daughter, Irina, return home May 15.

Like any savvy politician trolling for California dollars, the Russian sought first to mine the wallets of Hollywood, meeting with the likes of director Oliver Stone and television performers Cybil Shepherd and Mike Farrell.

Over an intimate Italian meal in Santa Barbara hosted by Arco Chairman Lodwrick Cook, Gorbachev and the celebrities talked of movies, ecology, history and the agenda of the Gorbachev Foundation.

“It seemed like a miracle, meeting him,” said Shepherd. “If there is one person responsible for ending the Cold War, it’s him.”

Still, it was unclear whether Hollywood would be sending any checks.

“Frankly, I think some of the people in South-Central L.A. may be more needy,” Farrell told The Times.

“It’s up in the air,” said Stone. “I’m sure they will do good work, but there are a lot of worthy organizations.”

By all indications, Gorbachev and his California handlers had better luck in the Bay Area. There was the $40-a-head speech at the Marriott and a $5,000-a-plate dinner at San Francisco’s Ritz Carlton.

At Stanford on Saturday, an event that sold out “faster than a U2 concert” according to one university official, about 9,500 students and faculty members delivered standing ovations before and after a speech in which Gorbachev revisited his tumultuous seven years in power. In remarks that drew chuckles from the crowd, he told spectators that they could “get the details” in his upcoming book.

Although adulation was his most common companion in California, Gorbachev did endure some tricky moments, most of which he handled with the deftness of an astute politician.

At a question-and-answer session after a San Francisco speech, a woman asked how Gorbachev could claim to be a vigorous defender of human rights while permitting the jailing of thousands of gays and lesbians during his tenure. Gorbachev looked uncomfortable, but hesitated only a moment before issuing his response:

“You ask a very difficult question,” he said. “I can only tell you my ethical position. I am in favor of a healthy way of life . . . (and) a healthy society.”

Gorbachev’s visit came during the violent aftermath of the Rodney G. King verdicts, but his schedule was unchanged by the unrest and he made only one brief reference to it. Noting that Mayor Tom Bradley had asked for his reflections on the case, Gorbachev told a San Francisco audience that he is “on the side of the individual whose rights were trampled.”

“What happened to that man (King) was a signal that we must understand,” Gorbachev said. He added, however, that “the level of democracy that exists in the United States” will make necessary changes possible.

Such nimble responses, coupled with his sweeping speeches, nourished the impression that Gorbachev may have hopes for a political comeback in his country.

Jim Garrison, Gorbachev’s U.S. tour guide, believes the former leader has risen beyond national politics and will now focus his attentions on “the emerging world order.

“He is on the global stage now,” said Garrison, a former official at the Esalen Institute who now runs the San Francisco branch of the Gorbachev Foundation.

But the Russian leader’s adviser, Alexander Likhotal, confides a different impression:

“I believe that deep inside him there is a feeling that his time is not over. I believe there is something inside him--something he may not know in his own mind--that drives him on, perhaps back (to power).”