Shalnev, though, was not persuaded. "You're not anti-Soviet?," he demanded.

Goldman's answer: "No."

But the questioning continued.

Shalnev said, "How do you define anti-Soviet?"

And Goldman explained, "Anyone who wants the Soviet Union to fail, who does not want it to succeed."

Shalnev: "And you're not that?"

Goldman: "Absolutely not."

A few minutes later, Goldman said, "It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy to see him try and not succeed."

Shalnev pushed once more. "Don't you see him succeeding?," he asked.

Goldman's assessment: "No, we don't. He's the right man with the right ideas, but he's not going to succeed."

And later, Goldman asked, "What happens if Gorbachev fails? What happens if I'm right?"

Shalnev propsed a deal, asking, "How much do you want to bet on that?"

"I'll bet," said Goldman.

"How much?," his questioner demanded.

The capitalist scholar's response: "One dollar."

Unbelieving, Shalnev said, "The fate of an entire country on one dollar?"

"I'm not a betting man," Goldman said.

The reporters then turned their questioning to Goldman's thoughts on who would succeed Gorbachev and to his opinion of President Bush's foreign policy.

But before heading off to Houghton Library to view Leon Trotsky's original papers (the Soviets seemed shocked that Harvard owned them and several times asked Goldman if the University would consider selling them to the USSR), Shalnev briefly returned to the question of Gorbachev's fate.

After hearing that Goldman predicted the secession of ethnic minority republics, riots in the streets and massive strikes in his homeland, Shalnev concluded, "Professor, you're a real pessimist."