Visiting the Gorbachev Foundation

My private meeting with President Gorbachev was to be on Thursday, the 1st of March, at 2:30 in the afternoon. I arrived at the Gorbachev Foundation at 2:25. President Gorbachev’s assistant, Irina Malikova, my very dear and kind friend, was waiting for me at the gate, and together we went upstairs. Shortly afterwards, the message came that the President was at the television station and he would be half an hour late for our appointment. In the meantime, I was so happy to be able to give the Foundation workers whom I know well, including some secretaries, copies of the book on President Gorbachev which I had written for his birthday, entitled President Gorbachev: The Home of Oneness-Peace-Dream-World. They were very, very pleased.

On the cover of the book is a picture of President Gorbachev encircled by seventy tiny pictures of Raisa Maximovna. When I gave one lady the book, she challenged me. She said that there were only sixty-nine, not seventy, little pictures of Raisa Maximovna surrounding the President’s picture. Later I counted the pictures myself and found that there were indeed seventy.