GORBACHEV WILL MARK HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY WITH 300 FRIENDS








MOSCOW, MARCH 2, 2001 /FROM A RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT/ -- The first and the only President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, will mark his 70th birthday anniversary today among 300 friends who will gather at a reception at Grand-Marriott hotel in Moscow.


	As the press service of the Gorbachev Fund has reported, the invitations to the reception were sent mainly to the "close friends belonging to a wide circle of people".


	...Gorbachev was always and everywhere accompanied by his wife Raisa Maximovna. She died in September 1999. And those present at the reception will certainly speak well of the USSR President's devoted companion.


	At the scientific conference held the day before and devoted to the results of the perestroika, Mikhail Sergeyevich, answering the remark by political scientist Vyacheslav Nikonov that in the anniversary days he should be with a liqueur-glass of cognac, said that "cognac will be tomorrow, and not one liqueur-glass of it". This gave journalists cause to presume that Gorbachev, dubbed by the people a "mineral secretary" for the ill-famed anti-alcohol campaign, has once and for all bid farewell to his Party past in this respect.


	The press service officials said that from 12 to 16 o'clock Mikhail Sergeyevich will receive congratulations at the Gorbachev Fund. They did not say who will congratulate the hero of the anniversary, and only noted that former vice-chancellor Hans-Dietrich Genscher had come from Germany by air to attend the USSR President's celebration. Greetings to the "father of perestroika" from abroad from statesmen, public figures, writers, scientists, common citizens and whole collectives began to come several days before the birthday anniversary.


	The Gorbachev Fund officials noted that Mikhail Gorbachev is meeting the anniversary "in good form". Mikhail Sergeyevich himself who is now the leader of the Russian United Social Democratic Party told newsmen the other day that his main mission now is "build a strong, people's and living party, a party of young people". At the same time he stressed that he does not intend to put forward his candidature either in the parliamentary, or presidential elections any more.


	Anyway, today, marking the anniversary of the last in history leader of the CPSU - "the guiding and leading force of Soviet society" and the first and the only President of the USSR, no one can refute the thesis that there was a whole epoch - the "epoch of Gorbachev" - in our country's history.