Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
No debate: Gorbachev a leader

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So we continue to scour the political profiles. We watch every word, every nuance, every back bulge of the debates, looking for that hint of something that will settle our souls.

Then Mikhail Gorbachev comes to town. And you see right away what you have been looking for.

Gorbachev, 73, was in Seattle Tuesday to open the Northwest office of the Rosinternetfund, a nonprofit seeking to develop Internet use and talent in remote parts of Russia. The hope is that the country will learn the skills to better compete and work with the rest of the world.

Gorbachev is the group's chairman, an ace-in-the-hole to attract business and money, but also to inspire.

"He means credibility," said Alexander Ostrovsky, who, with fellow Russian and Microsoft retiree Yuri Starikov, will head the firm's Kirkland office.

At a reception at the Columbia Tower Club, people paid $300 to be photographed with the man who led the former Soviet Union through the end of the Cold War and into the openness of glasnost.

He left office in 1992, two years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He has since formed the Gorbachev Foundation and Green Cross International, an environmental group based in Geneva.

"Gah! I am so busy," he said through a translator. "I don't have the time to fry eggs."

In person, Gorbachev is less imposing than the history he carries within him. His hair has turned snowy white, and the famous birthmark fades in the light of his charisma.

I asked if he knew what he was starting when, in 1986, he introduced perestroika, a program of economic, political and social restructuring.
 
Russia was living "like a fortress, in isolation," he began. He envisioned perestroika as "a basis for operation between Russia and other nations."

It became the domino that knocked over 75 years of totalitarianism and gave the Russian people new freedom. But, he said, they have yet to grasp the spirit of the program.

"Perestroika is a change in the way people behave, not just their property," he said. "People have to rebuild their minds rather than changing the furniture in the room."

He misses being president, even though, "Like here, once a president, always a president."

That said, "I never felt as free as I feel now. And the kind of person I am, being free is the most important thing. Not the ability to act at will, but the ability to speak and speak out. So I have been doing my best."

He lost his wife, Raisa, in 1999. "Too early," was all he said. He spends his free time reading and writing.

Ronald Reagan once described Gorbachev as "a true world statesman."

But the man I met was also the former farmboy who can still recognize the thrum of a combine.

And maybe that's what makes a leader — clearing fields so history can grow.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She may just write him in.