Not since the Minnesota Twins won the 1987 World Series have Minnesotans been so giddy. They are, as Garrison Keillor once said of growing up in this heavily Scandinavian state, ”about as excited as someone of my background can get.”
The six-hour visit June 3 of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, following his four days of summit talks in Washington, D.C., is seen here as an event that will put Minnesota on the world map, open doors to increased trade for Midwestern companies, and boost the drooping political fortunes of Democratic Gov. Rudy Perpich, who pushed hard for it.
”I think it`s the biggest thing to hit Minnesota since the last glacier went through,” said Albert Eisele, a Minnesota-born, Washington, D.C., public relations man and Control Data Corp. lobbyist who encouraged Perpich to invite Gorbachev last February.
No one knows precisely why Gorbachev chose Minnesota, but it is likely a combination of long-standing business relations with Minnesota companies, such as Control Data, and Perpich`s aggressive invitation campaign. Perpich, who is of Croatian descent and once represented Control Data as a computer salesman in Eastern Europe, wrote Gorbachev in February, citing the similarity of Minnesota`s and Moscow`s climates and the East European heritage of many Minnesotans. And he enlisted the letters of Soviet exchange students in Minnesota.
Residents and officials of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have a metropolitan population of 2.3 million, are busily pondering where to take the Soviet president, what to tell him, who should get to meet him during his brief stay, and what to do with a press entourage more populous than most Minnesota towns.
About 7,000 journalists from all over the world have requested credentials for the summit talks. If just half that number accompany Gorbachev to Minnesota, they will, together with the nearly 1,000 Midwestern reporters expected, easily exceed the number expected for football`s Super Bowl to be held here in 1992.
Gorby dolls
Items commemorating the June 3 visit are appearing already. T-shirts that bear the legend ”USA, MINNESOTA, USSR, JUNE 3, 1990,” are rolling off the presses and ringing up sales. The Dayton-Hudson department store in downtown Minneapolis ordered 1,000 Monday, sold out, and ordered 10,000 more two hours later, said Peter Lambert of Barrett Inc., the firm in Bloomington, Minn., producing the shirts. The inevitable coffee cups, Gorby dolls, etc., likely will follow. Meanwhile, ”Welcome Gorby” signs are beginning to appear in the windows of Minneapolis stores.
On Monday, Perpich appointed a 17-member commission to handle the arrangements. But Tuesday an advance party of Soviet officials arrived, toured the two cities, and made clear it was they and Gorbachev who would decide the itinerary and who of importance would meet him.
Gorbachev has expressed interest in meeting with executives from high-technology companies, representatives of agriculture and the food-
processing industry and other industries in the Midwest. Although the names have not been made public, likely to among them will be representatives of Cargill Inc., a grain exporter; Honeywell International Inc., which makes electronic production-control equipment; and leaders of the region`s farm-labor organizations.
At the top of the governor`s wish list is a speech by Gorbachev on the steps of the Capitol in St. Paul, the town where Keillor spun his radio tales of the mythical Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon on radio`s ”Prairie Home Companion.” By midweek, such a speech appeared unlikely, Perpich said.
Definitely out of the question is a trip to a farm, such as that in 1959 by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the farm in Coon Rapids, Iowa, of Roswell Garst. The visit marked a thaw in the Cold War as a jolly Khrushchev was trailed by a mere 300 reporters through Garst`s cornfields. Gorbachev had expressed a desire through an intermediary to also visit a farm.
”There just isn`t enough time,” said Donald Bohn, the governor`s press secretary. ”But anything else is possible.” Gorbachev is to arrive about 1 p.m. June 3, a Sunday, and to leave at 7 p.m.
Change in spirit
The likely agenda will include lunch with Perpich and other political leaders at the governor`s mansion, followed by a meeting with business and agricultural leaders at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Minneapolis.
Along the way, Gorbachev`s motorcade may pause along a still undisclosed route, affording him the people-to-people opportunities he displayed such relish for during his past visits to Washington and New York City.
He will take in at least one other sight. Strong possibilities are the 7 1/2-acre sculpture garden at the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis, which is preparing for an exhibit of Russian Constructivist paintings; St. Paul`s Cathedral in St. Paul; St. Mary`s Basillica in Minneapolis; and Meadowbrook Elementary School in the western Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley. The Soviets visited the school Wednesday and heard kindergartners there sing,
”Poost Sigda,” an old Russian children`s song.
”It was beautiful, just beautiful,” said Principal Marilyn Olson.
”They smiled when they heard the children`s voices.”
But notably absent from the vistas he will see along the busy freeways that snake through the two cities are 38 ”The Party`s Over” billboards that would have been difficult for any visitor to miss.
The controversial billboards featured a picture of Gorbachev, and an empty, uncapped bottle of Karkov vodka, a Minnesota brand. The caption played the demise of communism in Eastern Europe against the advertising agency`s suggestion that the fun ends when a party host runs out of Karkov vodka.
”It was sort of done in the spirit of fun,” said Gerry Schmitt, creative director at the ad agency, Schmitt and Sloan. ”The client told us they wanted a board that people would really talk about. They got it.”
National attention and local criticism brought the boards down this week, to be replaced by expressions of ”Welcome, Mr. President” and ”To Your Health” in Russian Cyrillic.
”We felt something more appropriate was needed,” said John Freizalds, vice president of Corporate Word, which is doing the translations.
Freizalds, as it happens, is one of about 2,000 residents of Latvian descent here. They are the Twin Cities` largest immigrant group from the Baltic nations. Many came in the first quarter of the century and, with Croatians, Slavs and other Eastern Europeans, made their way to the Iron Range mining country of northern Minnesota.
Descendants of Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians from the Twin Cities, Chicago and St. Louis will make their presence known during Gorbachev`s visit, said Karin Berholtz, a member of the governor`s commission on Eastern Europe. But the protests will consist of little more than a display of national flags.
Said Freizalds: ”Minnesotans are really quiet. It took them about 20 years to learn how to boo the Vikings.”
The kind of statement they would like to make is best typified by Orest Kramarczuk, owner of Kramarczuk`s East European Delicatessen, who has asked the governor`s office to invite Gorbachev to drop by for a visit and a little borscht and piroshki. Kramarczuk said he would encourage Gorbachev to continue his liberalization policies.
”I want him to see for himself what the immigrants from the Ukraine have accomplished in the U.S. because of freedom and capitalism,” Kramarczuk said. As Gorbachev seeks to take his country through the wrenching shift to a free-market economy, Minnesotans are convinced they have something to offer him. The Twin Cities area has one of the biggest assemblages of high-technology companies in the nation between Cambridge, Mass., and Silicon Valley in north-central California.
In anticipation of future East European trade deals, the state is about to open trade offices in Moscow and Budapest.
”We have been dealing with them in a very active way since 1987,” said David Speer, Minnesota`s commissioner of trade and economic development.
Good for `Governor Goofy`
Bohn said the governor`s office is hearing from a wide range of citizens with their suggestions about what the Soviet premier should see and hear.
A couple in Prairie Island want him to see their baby boy, whom they named Mikhail after him, Bohn said. Restaurants want him to dine with them;
tailors want to measure him for a new suit; singers, musicians and grade-school children want to perform for him; and the town of Moscow, Minn., would like him to stop by and take in its charms.
Wherever he goes, Perpich will be there.
Perpich faces a tough re-election campaign this fall in his bid for a third consecutive term. He was low in the opinion polls before the Gorbachev visit was announced, and has been laboring under a ”Governor Goofy”
sobriquet bestowed upon him by Republican opponents for his more controversial populist actions.
The name made the headline in a Newsweek magazine piece about him earlier this year. But all that may be behind him now, barring sudden unrest in Vilnius, or some such other unforeseen catastrophe that could postpone the trip.
”This is the kind of publicity politicians dream about,” said Patrick Forceia, a Minneapolis Democratic political consultant.
Said Bohn: ”There probably are 49 other governors right now wishing they could be so goofy.”
