Gorby Hits the Twin Cities at the End of an Era.

(From The Moscow Times)

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We look forward to hearing from you.Email the Opinion Page EditorThe 19th-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol warned us that there would be days like June 3, 1990. On that day Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, and his wife, Raisa, came to Minnesota. But back in Minnesota we hadn't learned the lesson from Gogol's "Inspector General" of how the small town of Yensk had rolled out the red carpet to welcome a certain Khlestakov whom they believed was someone else. Minnesotans, known to most Americans through Garrison Keilor's weekly radio program "A Prairie Home Companion" as the shy Scandinavians of Lake Wobegon, lost themselves in a mass frenzy of Gorbymania for a day.

Of course, all politics is local, including this event. Despite the rising tide of Republicanism in the 1980s, Minnesota had stayed Democratic. Governor Rudolph Perpich won election and re-election in the 1980s in easy landslides. He was the son of Croatian immigrants to Minnesota's hardscrabble mining region and had risen in state politics by joining the state's old populism with the promise to make us "world class." We didn't call him that at the time, but he was what would later be called a New Democrat who enjoyed wide support from both labor and business. But he was also, as we say in Minnesota, "a little different." More and more the press fed on his personal idiosyncrasies. By 1990, the national press had picked up on this and was calling him "Governor Goofy." A visit from Gorbachev would put an end to this ridicule and help him sail to victory in the re-election campaign six months down the road. This rekindled rumors of a Perpich bid for the presidency.

The Gorbachevs touched down at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport shortly after 1 p.m. After a luncheon with Perpich's family and friends, Gorbachev and Raisa took off on a triumphant motorcade. The old avenues of St. Paul -- once described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as "a little solemn" -- were lined with tens of thousands of well-wishers in Gorby T-shirts chanting "Gorby!" In downtown Minneapolis, Gorbachev stopped to meet with about 135 VIPs from Midwestern businesses at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, whose parent company already had a stake in Moscow's Slavyanskaya Hotel. Then the Gorbachevs got personal. En route to a family visit, the Gorbachevs stunned and won the hearts of ordinary Minneapolitans. They stopped at a small Mexican restaurant to chat with the help over coffee and then shopped for toys for their grandchildren at a drug store. The day ended with a visit to computer giant Control Data Corporation.