Soviet Leader

MIKHAIL S. GORBACHEV, the Kremlin leader who presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is such an unpopular man in today's Russia that there is a tendency to write off his renewed presidential ambitions as a joke. This is a mistake.Although Mr. Gorbachev's comeback is hardly likely, the 65-year-old former communist chief could perform a valuable service to his country by conducting a campaign so tightly focused on issues that it would force President Boris N. Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov, the neo-communist candidate, to outline their specific policies for Russia's future.

KIEV, Ukraine -- The talk in Kiev these days, as in othe outlying capitals of the former Soviet Union, is tinged with fear that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's defeat in a power struggle with his hard-line, nationalist parliament might give free rein to Russia's ancient instinct to dominate its neighbors.Leaders of nearly all the newly independent states -- including Ukraine and Georgia, whose relations with Moscow are most strained at the moment -- have sent messages of support for Mr. Yeltsin in the faint hope that their words will somehow help.

WASHINGTON -- Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has said in an interview that he has received tempting offers of lecture posts at universities in the United States, Japan and elsewhere but that he intends to retain a role in his country's political life.However, Gorbachev, who is expected to resign his now-titular presidency within days, did not rule out the possibility of combining foreign offers with the future work he expects to do at home."I will not leave the world of politics" in Russia, he said in a taped interview broadcast yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

MOSCOW -- In the days leading to her death yesterday, the Russian people finally granted Raisa Maximova Gorbachev what they had long denied her in life: their respect, their admiration, their sympathy.Raisa Gorbachev, who once annoyed the citizens of the Soviet Union as much as she charmed those of the West, died at 3 a.m. in a hospital in Muenster, Germany, where she was being treated for acute leukemia. She was 67.Her husband, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who opened the Soviet Union to the rest of the world, was at her side -- as always.

MOSCOW -- The largely discredited leadership of the Soviet Union struggled unsuccessfully to recapture a semblance of authority yesterday as the republics acted decisively to free themselves from the old ties.Other nations began establishing diplomatic ties with the Baltics, where Lithuania started to issue its own visas for the first time in half a century. The Uzbekistan Parliament prepared to declare independence, as the Ukraine and Byelorussia already have.Moldova plans to vote on independence today, and the chairman of Armenia's Parliament, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, pronounced that "the center is dead.

Could life after communism have turned out better for Russia and its former Soviet neighbors? Mikhail Gorbachev insists that it could have. And things are so dismal today that his argument, tainted as it is by self-justification, is worth a fair hearing.In the eight years since Boris Yeltsin used the aftermath of the failed coup against Gorbachev to maneuver his rival from power, the Russian economy has shrunk steadily and natural riches have been spirited abroad. Wealth has been monopolized by a handful of unprincipled oligarchs while millions have slipped into destitution.

A group of 40 business leaders from the Soviet Union toured three Baltimore companies yesterday to learn about the various stages of business development in the United States.The group's two-week tour is sponsored by Soyuz Transworld Corp., a Washington-based firm that promotes trade between the two countries. The businessmen have toured Washington to learn about American government, traveled to Baltimore to learn about manufacturing and are to go to New York for an introduction to the New York Stock Exchange.

When he was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev introduced a new word into the Russian language: "konsensus." But people got so tired of hearing about "konsensus" that it became a sort of running joke.Now, in the fractured body politic of Russia, where the splinters have splinters, the idea of bringing people and ideas together seems unimaginable. But if there is a consensus about anything, it is this: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev -- the man who brought an end to the Cold War, made democratic elections possible and yesterday declared his intention to run for president -- stands virtually no chance of being the people's choice in the presidential election.

Oct. 15 1964: It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office.

Ironically, it was the American press, not the Soviet press, which gave the Sputnik launch such immense coverage, allowing it to become one of the most powerful weapons of propaganda the Soviet Union had." - SERGEI KHRUSHCHEV, son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, on the impact of the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, 50 years ago today