Mikhail Gorbachev, Private Citizen

It is a brave new world for Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev. In January they moved into a three-room Moscow apartment overflowing with 20,000 books and documents. Turning 61 this week, he is starting his job as president of an international policy institute. She is trying to make ends meet. They still enjoy the comparative comforts of a country dacha, a limousine and 20 bodyguards, but life as private citizens has proved hard, the couple told a Sipa Press interviewer. Gorbachev's monthly pension is 3,900 rubles, once a princely sum but at current exchange rates worth only $60. Says he: "Last month we calculated we'd spent 3,900 rubles. That's all my pension."

There are personal compensations for the loss of power. Gorbachev: "Raisa Maximovna and I have more time together. The rest doesn't matter. Above all, we appreciate that over all these years, we have stayed like friends." Raisa: "To understand Mikhail Sergeyevich, you have to understand where he started from and what he has managed to do. And if you could only know how we survived over the past seven years, how many sleepless nights we spent, how much worry there has been." Gorbachev: "It is humiliating to complain."

Their private life is quiet, full of music, books and dinners with friends. Gorbachev: "We love going for walks, to be in nature." Raisa: "He is exaggerating. He is always working. We have no time to be together. I hope all this will come." Gorbachev: "Nature is everything to us. We prefer to go for walks in winter, when there is a snowstorm. Everything disappears in a veil of snow. In these moments, you feel eternity."

He still frets about the fate of his country. Gorbachev: "I would like Yeltsin to succeed. I am afraid that in certain circumstances he could take an authoritarian position."