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It would be good to get into the American heartland, the new president of the Soviet Union thought, as his plane lifted off from the Washington airport. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had grown up in a peasant family in the south of Russia, in Stavropol krai, among the steppes. He had a soft spot in his heart for the people of the heartland around the world. He had just concluded a very successful series of meetings with the American politicians. He was very pleased, to be sure.