In foreign capitals and Soviet cities, he ordered his limousine to stop, got out on the streets, and worked the crowds. No one had ever seen such a thing: a modern Soviet leader who walked without an aide at each elbow. “Who is Gorbachev’s chief supporter?” the joke went. “No one. He can stand up all by himself.” The puffy gray men in the lower ranks of the Communist Party, men who had run the cities and towns like feudal princes, were beginning to get the idea that a little contact with the serfs they commanded just might prolong their dominion. And so it was that I was extended a warm
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