Gorbachev back for another season

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 13

Gorbachev back for another season

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, reappeared in public on • Monday after a six-week ' absence, at the start of a meet-the-people visit to eastern Siberia. Angry Siberians asked him to go into their shops and see that they had nothing to buy, in unpre- . cedented scenes broadcast > across the country on Moscow television. The heckling, although apparently not aimed at Gorbachev personally, came within minutes of the Kremlin chief’s arrival at Krasnoyarsk, a

Siberian industrial region, starting a week-long visit. State television officials said Mr Gorbachev’s visit would be the top item on the evening news, heralding the start of a new political season after a prolonged period of uncertainty about the Soviet leader’s activities during his summer vacation. Tass suggested that Mr Gorbachev might launch a new foreign policy initiative in Krasnoyarsk, a city of nearly one million perched on the banks of the mighty Yenisei River. It noted that his trips to the Soviet provinces have

included major policy speeches —- two years ago in Vladivostok, where he launched a drive toward Asia, and last year in the Arctic port of Murmansk, where he proposed curbs on northern navies. Mr Gorbachev, aged 57, has also used his Soviet travels as a way of taking the country’s pulse on the progress of his reforms, and the visits have now become a hallmark of his leadership. This year, Mr Gorbachev’s summer whereabouts were a State secret as tightly guarded as in the past.