San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Gorbachev treated like rock star in first S.F. trip
It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when San Francisco greeted a Russian leader as if he were a rock star. Mikhail Gorbachev visited San Francisco for the first time in the spring of 1990, riding in a big black Zil limousine the size of an armored car, flying the red hammer and sickle flag of the old Soviet Union. Gorbachev came to San Francisco at the height of his power, talking here and at Stanford University of openness and the end of the Cold War. We thought he would change the world.
Instead, when Gorbachev died at a great old age last week, he was nearly the forgotten man. “All of Gorbachev’s reforms are now in ashes, in smoke,” Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov was quoted as saying the month before Gorbachev died. Gorbachev had outlived his time.
On that beautiful spring day in San Francisco, Gorbachev was the man of the hour. Crowds lined the streets as his motorcade drove slowly by. His limousine didn’t have those tinted windows you see now. Gorbachev was clearly visible inside, waving and smiling. A lady I know remembers waving at Gorbachev as he rode up 19th Avenue on his way back from Stanford. She thinks he waved back.
At California and Fillmore streets, Gorbachev ordered the limo stopped and he jumped out. “He walked toward the people on the street, and they surged toward him,” The Chronicle reported the next day. “Others ran out of Dino’s pizza parlor, the corner liquor store and the neighborhood copy center.”
He stayed for only a few minutes, shaking hands, working the crowd like a politician running for office. Then his motorcade sped off.
Reporters moved in to ask the citizens their impression. Mark Newman, a former Marine, said he’d shaken the Russian’s hand. “What I did for 10 years in the Marines was completely opposite to what that man stands for. But he’s opening the doors. He’s a very likable guy.”
Dino Stavrikikis, who owned the pizza shop that bears his name, said Gorbachev was the most famous man he’d ever met, and he’d met Ronnie Lott, the 49er; Sleepy Floyd, the Warrior; and Jerry Brown, the governor. But Gorbachev was running late, and his motorcade then headed for the Soviet consular residence on Broadway in Pacific Heights, on San Francisco’s Gold Coast, the center of West Coast capitalism.
A gaggle of reporters and news cameras was waiting. I was there myself, as an on-scene reporter — a “legman” as it’s known in the trade — ready to give notes to a more senior reporter in The Chronicle newsroom. The senior staffer would pull all the day’s activities into a single cogent story. Details were important. “Make it sing,” the editor would say. “I want all the good stuff.”
So I crowded right up to a little fence around the consular residence, and when Gorbachev got out of his car and came over, I was right there.
I had been a Cold War soldier myself, two years in the Army, three in the reserve, ready to defend my country, and there was the president of the Soviet Union, standing in front of me.
I could see the famous birthmark on his forehead, and he looked right at me. But not really. It’s a trick that a handful of people with charisma have. They make you think they are looking you in the eye and are talking directly to you. It’s rare. Bill Clinton had that quality. So did Mikhail Gorbachev.
He had a sonorous voice and pronounced every word carefully and with emphasis. What he said sounded very important, and he smiled a little toward the end as if he were telling some private joke. But it was all in Russian. I didn’t understand a word.
A very unimportantlooking man with a slight, flat voice interpreted. “The president wishes to say …”
And his voice trailed off. The reporters couldn’t hear him. They made him repeat the words at least twice.
As it turned out, Gorbachev had said: “I always wanted to come here. You are very fortunate to live here. President Bush should tax the people for living in such a beautiful place.”
I called it in. “So Gorby likes us, huh?” the reporter in the office said. “Were there any demonstrations? Any trouble?” No, I said, just that. “Good stuff,” he said.
Later that year, Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize and he came back to San Francisco to make the city headquarters of the Gorbachev Foundation, a research organization centered in the Presidio. But the Gorbachev Foundation moved away as Gorbachev’s power and influence faded.
For some time, relations with Russia were good — Russian Federation president Dmitry Medvedev, then Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, visited San Francisco in 2010 and even sent a tweet from Twitter headquarters. But relations soured. Five years ago this week, the U.S. government shut down the Russian consulate in San Francisco. The Russians burned boxes and boxes full of sensitive papers, the black smoke drifting over Pacific Heights. It was a new era, but not what we had in mind the day San Francisco cheered Mikhail Gorbachev.