From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

The momentous decisions in the Soviet Union last week were approved by the Communist Party's 249-member Central Committee. Or should that be 250-member? Our Moscow bureau chief, John Kohan, asked his secretary to check with the International Department of the Central Committee. The apparatchik there said he had "no idea." Kohan's secretary then called the Committee's General Department, which refused to supply any information. Next she tried a back channel, asking a Soviet magazine editor for the number to call. Kohan then got the answer he needed (249 members) from the Central Committee's Department for Party Building and Cadre Work. Reflecting on that experience, says Kohan, "I have enormous sympathy for Mikhail Gorbachev and the struggles he faces every day with the party bureaucracy."

Kohan, who became bureau chief in 1988, started preparing for the assignment when he began studying Russian at the University of Virginia 20 years ago. He spent four months in 1974 polishing his language skills at the University of Leningrad. Joining TIME in New York City the following year, he helped shape the magazine's coverage of Soviet affairs. Staffers in the World section still vividly remember John's farewell party, held at a Russian restaurant; to this day, at least one of John's colleagues cannot look at a bottle of vodka without wincing.

Just since January, John has reported on the secessionist movement in Lithuania, civil war in the Caucasus, thousands of Soviets marching on the Kremlin, and the abdication of the Communist Party. Sipping tea one evening last week, he and some Russian friends agreed that the history unfolding around them matched that of the revolutions of 1917.

Selecting a spot to pose for the picture you see here, John decided on the entrance to the liberal Moscow News. On the sidewalk he encountered a huckster selling an unofficial broadsheet printed in Minsk. The lead article was titled "Raisa Gorbachev: Who Is She? Translation from TIME Magazine." Says Kohan: "He was doing a brisk business at one ruble per copy." Now that's glasnost.