World Notes SOVIET UNION

Convinced that members of the U.S. Congress are overpaid at $89,500 a year? Irate that their salaries may go up to $135,000? Then Mikhail Gorbachev may be your idea of the perfect public servant. For the first time, the Soviet leader's pay has been revealed: according to Vitali Korotich, editor of the weekly Ogonyok, Gorbachev receives 1,500 rubles a month, or $30,000 a year.

On the other hand, Gorbachev makes about seven times the average Soviet wage. (George Bush, at $200,000, makes ten times the average annual American income.) And don't forget the perks: a limousine, a Moscow apartment, a dacha, hand-delivered groceries. Korotich also disclosed that Gorbachev donated $600,000 in foreign royalties from his book Perestroika, to the Communist Party. Are you listening, Jim Wright?