I am writing these notes on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, trying to recollect and retrieve from my memory everything that I have ever thought and written about him. And, indeed, I have criticized him often and a lot - I have reproached him and even scolded him - which I thought was fair at the time, but not quite fair if we judge the past in the court of changing times. They say, "Do not judge, lest you be judged by others." Most likely, more than anything else, it is because time is a continuation of events that alter our most sincere judgments and assessments. Without retracting anything I said in the past, I would like to clarify a few specific points, and I am glad I have a chance to do it openly and in public, the same as I did before.

I have written that Gorbachev is a leader who does not hear what anyone says. Now I ask myself: Is there anyone who came after him, anyone at all up there today, who does? Could it be that glasnost put into effect by Gorbachev in mute Russia for the first time in many decades, turned out to be "a voice crying in the wilderness"?

I did not like it when he talked about "the socialist choice" over and over again, when his attempts to hold the Union (in my opinion outdated as far as history is concerned) together could not keep pace with the chain of events. But now I ask myself: What in fact have we gained by replacing the USSR with the CIS, a strange, inoperative bulky thing that is good for nothing and only causes many headaches?

I disliked the people around Gorbachev - all those who had framed and betrayed him before and after the August 1991 coup1. But was Yeltsin's team, which he kept changing like gloves and which became even worse for it, any better? Obviously, the question of personnel, just like the housing problem, is an Achilles' heel in this country.

Even then, at the beginning of the 1990s, notwithstanding all the critical arrows I aimed at Gorbachev, I did write positive and kind words about him. I wrote about his giving us a great and valuable blessing: under him a country of total fear had turned into a country able to overcome the inertia of fear. It was on Gorbachev's watch that a new generation of people emerged who would never agree to return to the past, no matter what it was called. To this day I experience deep and sincere gratitude to Gorbachev for those millions of my compatriots who began to see clearly again. Today, the same as in August 1991, I am happy to see that the "team" selected by him did not kill him and his family.

Having myself lived a happily married life as a woman, I was able to see and understand the love of Raisa Maximovna and his love of her quite well. And I do appreciate love, a rare thing to see these days. I think I understand the part of his life that Mikhail Sergeyevich lost after the passing of Raisa Maximovna.

I think it has to do with my nature or somehow it just happens that I always keep hurting people. I may have hurt the feelings of Mikhail Sergeyevich when I publicly advised him to formally register "Memorial," at that time not yet officially recognized, and to rehabilitate prisoners of conscience rather than to put up memorial plaques in memory of Andrey Dmitriyevich.

I would like to mention two episodes which somehow helped me to understand Gorbachev better as a human being.

Once Ella Pamfilova asked me to give her letter to Mikhail Sergeyevich. At a grand reception in the Kremlin Palace, I came up to him and handed him the envelope which, then and there, ended up in the hands of one of his assistants next to him. I feared what was going to become of the letter and said, "Do read it yourself!" Mikhail Sergeyevich said abruptly, "I do read what you write!" Then, afraid that he sounded harsh, he smiled and added, "I read absolutely everything your write!"

Soon I had a chance to see for myself that he really did so. At a breakfast at the U.S. Embassy I handed him my petition for a few prisoners of conscience who had not yet been set free (including Mikhail Kazachkov), and a plea to release an employee of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant who had been exposed to radiation during the accident and now was suffering from radiation sickness. In my letter I pointed out that it was a gross mistake not to include radiation sickness in the list of diseases which would allow convicts to be released. The next morning a letter from Bakatin [the Minister of the Interior] was delivered to me at home. It said that radiation sickness would be immediately included in the list and the cases of those mentioned in my letter would be reconsidered without delay. And, indeed, within a month, they all were released.

Andrey Dmitriyevich watched Gorbachev's first appearance on TV after his election as General Secretary in a hospital in the city of Gorky, where he was totally isolated. At that time he was on a hunger strike, and it was perhaps the most difficult period of his life. However, he wrote in his diary: "It looks like this time our country has been lucky with the new leader."

Writing these notes a decade later, when I grieve over the second Caucasian war, which is a tragedy for this country and my personal misfortune, I, having weighed all the pros and cons of Gorbachev's time, can repeat Sakharov's words: In 1985 our country was lucky to have Mikhail Gorbachev, of all members of the Politburo, elected General Secretary.