In an interview with NEWSWEEK in San Francisco, Gorbachev said it no longer makes sense to “keep on arguing about what is better, capitalism or socialism.” His current style of life bridges the two. He and his wife, Raisa, receive a state pension worth only about $33 a month, but they have an apartment in Moscow’s fashionable Lenin Hills and a dacha in the country. The Russian government throws in a few of his old perks, including bodyguards and a ZiL limousine. It’s a nice life, but the former president needs major money to run his Gorbachev Foundation, a political think tank that serves him as a sort of government-in-exile.

Cash flows in from books, a worldwide newspaper column and other ventures, including a movie about Gorbachev’s life. He is writing his memoirs, which could be as lucrative as they are long-winded; aides say he has finished 700 pages and still has not left his hometown of Stavropol. Gorbachev also has made fund-raising visits to Germany and Japan. Pravda reported that he had extracted $500,000 from the Japanese alone. That’s a far cry from the $2 million Reagan scooped up in Japan after he left office, but then Gorbachev lost the cold war. The organizers of his American tour–which will take him to Atlanta, New York, Washington and Boston this week-have said the Gorbachev Foundation will net $1 million from the visit.

Gorbachev said his initial aim is to promote “the continuation of democratic change” in Russia and the other former Soviet republics. “I believe that in doing this, I will have great opportunities, great chances to fulfill my potential,” he said. He insisted, as he always does, that he has no current plans to enter politics again–which is just as well, considering his lack of popularity at home. But he said that if “the policy of democratic reform were to become threatened, then … I would have to rethink the situation, and I would have to take a different decision.” Already he is chafing a bit on the political sidelines, admitting that “my potential for action and for affecting [events] is less than it was before I relinquished the post of president of the Soviet Union.”

So far, however, Gorbachev has been careful not to criticize Russian President Boris Yeltsin too sharply. In his NEWSWEEK interview, he complained about press restrictions in Russia and warned that Yeltsin would make a “very dangerous” mistake if he dissolved the Congress of People’s Deputies. But in private, aides say, Gorbachev admits that his own historic legacy depends partly on Yeltsin. “Yeltsin must succeed,” he is quoted as saying, “for the sake of my reforms.” The Bush administration also wants to make sure that Gorbachev does not upstage Yeltsin, who will make an official visit to the United States in June. In Washington this week, Gorbachev is scheduled for a private dinner with President Bush and a speech at the Capitol, but there will be no trappings of a state visit.

Gorbachev continues to be more popular overseas than at home; he was cheered when he waded into a crowd of tourists in San Francisco. But as an elder statesman, he does not seem to have found his voice yet. In an unpaid address in Fulton, Mo., he failed miserably to compete with the ghost of Winston Churchill, who used the same venue for his 1946 speech on the start of the cold war. (“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill growled, “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”) Marking the end of the cold war, Gorbachev fell rhetorically flat. He said the world had entered a “watershed era” but admitted he had no idea how it would turn out.

Even friends think Gorbachev has tried to cash in too quickly on his fame. “Some of his advisers urged him to stay silent for at least half a year,” says an aide in Moscow. “But you know Gorbachev. He cannot.” A former Soviet official complains that “Gorbachev, after his resignation, really doesn’t have anything to say. There’s no message.” In Moscow, many people who admire Gorbachev for embarking on reform in the Soviet Union still think of him as yesterday’s man, not a leader for the future. At this stage in his difficult transition to private life, Gorbachev may have more celebrity than influence.