Fashioning Significance in an Insta--Biography

KONSTANTIN U. CHERNENKO had lain with Soviet gods nary a week when this eminently disposable biography of the Russian Kennedy hurtled headlong towards Gorbachev lovers everywhere

For those aching to be partaking in the instant history of a new finger on the nuclear button, the new hammer banging the Soviet sickle. Thomas G. Butson of the New York Time's instant-biography of Mikhail S. Gorbachev will come not second too soon.

ButGorbachev, for all its misdirected stabs at historical perspective, is a rather embarrassing attempt to fashion significance and the ever-crucial Historical Trend out of a series of newspaper headline and some superficial research.

of course, the Soviets don't splash their head Reds all overComrademagazine, especially when the ostensible leader is desperately trying to create himself a cult of personality. Gorbachev, though more visible than most saw the public stare in the West only in recent trips to Canada and Britain; he is but tangentially connected to the events of the last three decades

Unlike the words of Chernenko and Yuri v. Andropov neither the new leader's autobiography nor his collected speeches appear to have been published in their English or Russian and Gorbachev is too young have mattered back before World War II, when reality was not completely filtered though the ideological scrubbers

So Butson had a formidable task in researching his opus, but that does not come close to justifying what can charitably by called an exercise in glorified. bllshitting.

Botson, the Times' assistant foreign editor, tries everything to pad his Who's Who biography into a $1495 hardcover offering. He searches for significance in offering. HE searches for significance in Gorbachev's halcyon State Law School, calling him ambitious, active, but not terribly well known. But the best evidence he can muster is the following from two unnamed classmates.

They said that despite his Kmosomol activity he was not generally known throughout the law school, let alone the university

and

The same opinion was offered by another woman who studies in the same building, although not at the Law School. She said that she probably met him in the five years she was there, but she could not remember him at all.

Take note, thesis writers, this is research.

BUTSON IS ALSO left source less and clueless when it comes to accounting for Gorbachev's actions during the reform days of Andropos's brief rule, when Gorbachev's presumably was in sync with the prevailing root--out bourgeois-corruption atmosphere. The high point of this brief period was Andropov's purge of corrupt Brezhnelackeys, who were to upright bureaucracy what Massachusetts State House politics are to democratic government.

What do Andropov's purges say about Gorbachev.

Gorbachev's as a member of the Politburo, would almost certainly have had a general say in the firings and he may have been directly involved in some of them since they involved officials in areas such as consumer oriented industry, where he was increasingly becoming involved.

Butson's pseudo Kremlinology is a shame, because it is possible to analyze Gorbachev's significance even before the Russian Research Center crowd goes into its historiographical full court press

As several historians at Columbia and Harvard have noted over the past years--before Gorbachev's rise became apparent--this decade offers major opportunities for change in U.S. Soviet relations because for the first time the Soviet leadership is not stained by the hyper-paranoia of the Stalin period.

If, as Columbia's Seweryn Bialer argues, Stalinism is more than the man himself, then the Soviet Union is only now inching out from under the himself of Stalin's state terror and economies-as as war ethos

Since Stalin, only Khruschey gave any hint that he could attempt: o back way from Stalinism's monomanic pursuit of the ultimate, indestructible state. Brezhnes firmly dedicated himself to the status quo, and one doubts that Andropov and Chernenko were ever more than a bad artist's conception. of the Soviet state and his brutal, but failed, attempt to impose socialism by force.

Gorbachev, then, but that does not justify the sense of manifest density that colors Butson's earnest tale about "the determined young man from Stavropool">

What is perhaps most interesting about Gorbachev is the way the West have allowed itself to believe that the young leader's to engaging personality--and his purportedly glamorous wife--somehow will result in better U.S. Soviet relation and peace on earth.

Butson says that Gorbaches's well publieized trips to Canada and Britain are example of Soviet confidence in him , and evidence that he is cut from a different cloth than his predecessors, But Gorbachev's high-profile is best read as a reminder of how well the West are to embrace those who can smile for the camera. Kiss the babies, and generally act like your friendly neighborhood politician

The "nice guy" strategy was used by "Uncle Joe" Stalin during and after World War II, and by Khrusehes during his famous U.S. tour, but these flashes of life from the Kremlin have left us with little more than a few photo opportunities and some anecdotes for a presidential memoir.

Butson makes hay of British Prime Minister Margaret I hatcher evaluation of Gorbachev after his visit last year: "I like Mr. Gorbachev We can do business together." Fair enough, but not a basis for worldwide jubilation over Russia's new J.F.K.

Let's wait to judge Gorbachev, and while were waiting, let's not waste our time with superficial snow Jobs like Butson's Gorbachev.