By Greg Myre
Associated Press Write
Monday, September 20, 1999; 6:34 a.m. EDT

MOSCOW (AP) -- Raisa Gorbachev, the spirited and outspoken wife of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, died today in a German hospital after a battle with leukemia. She was 67.

Mrs. Gorbachev, who was widely admired in the West and long resented at home, died of circulatory and inner organ failure at University Hospital in Muenster, said hospital spokeswoman Jutta Reising.

Mrs. Gorbachev had been at the hospital since July 25 to receive treatment for leukemia. She underwent chemotherapy and had shown some improvement, but condition deteriorated in recent days.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991, stayed in Muenster and was at his wife's side throughout her illness.

After Mrs. Gorbachev fell ill, the couple that had been so widely despised in Russia suddenly received a flood of support and sympathy -- with thousands of Russians sending letters, flowers and money to the Gorbachev Foundation office in the Russian capital.

Some suggested special diets, others offered their prayers. A few offered blood and bone marrow transplants. Herbal medicines arrived from Siberia. One woman offered to go to Germany to cook for Gorbachev, saying he must be tired of German cuisine.

``It must be in the Russian character -- to run somebody into the mud, and them laud them to high heavens after a tragedy strikes,'' Vladimir Polyakov, a Gorbachev spokesman, said recently.

Many letters were from elderly people who had long resented Gorbachev for his role in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic and political turmoil that seized Russia.

Bright, fashionable and articulate, Mrs. Gorbachev was the very antithesis of the typical Soviet leader's wife.

While she charmed Western audiences, few Russians accepted the very public role she carved out for herself, and many resented her.

Gorbachev conceded in his memoirs that even his mother had never liked his wife. But he never left any doubt that Raisa -- his ``Raya'' -- was the love of his life, his soulmate and partner in both family life and politics.

``We were bound first of all by our marriage, but also by our common views on life,'' Gorbachev wrote. ``We both preached the principle of equality. We shared our common cares and helped each other always and in everything.''

Raisa Maksimovna Titorenko was born Jan. 5, 1932, in southern Siberia, and met Gorbachev while both were students at Moscow State University. She studied sociology; he studied law. The two were married in September 1953, and moved to Gorbachev's home region of Stavropol in southern Russia when he graduated in 1955.

Mrs. Gorbachev taught Marxist-Leninist philosophy in Stavropol, and later took a job as a lecturer at her alma mater, when her husband returned to Moscow as a rising Communist Party official. She gave up her job when Gorbachev became Communist Party chief in 1985.

She titillated gossip columnists with a supposed feud with U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan -- though both women denied any rivalry.

``Who does that dame think she is?'' Mrs. Reagan is said to have asked after being subjected to an extended dinner lecture from Mrs. Gorbachev.

Russians, used to having leaders who treated their wives as state secrets, never seen and never mentioned, asked much the same question.

``Who does she think she is, a member of the Politburo?'' people would ask, according to Gorbachev.

Only Vladimir Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, ever had as high a profile before the public.

Mrs. Gorbachev never fully adjusted to life as the wife of a Soviet leader.

``She was never quite comfortable among the `Kremlin wives,''' her husband wrote. But she never let their approbation stop her from exercising her role as her husband's No. 1 advisor.

When Gorbachev was placed under house arrest during an attempted coup in 1991, his wife suffered what she later described as an ``acute hypertensive crisis'' that resembled a minor stroke.

Later, after Gorbachev had lost his position in the collapse of the Soviet Union, she conceded that their lives had become ``a bit more gloomy.''

In 1996, she told a Russian newspaper that she had begun selling off her wardrobe of evening dresses because she no longer needed them.

Many recent letters to the Gorbachev Foundation praised the couple for displays that once drew derision, especially their love and unashamed devotion to each other.

``Someday, a great saga will be written about Raisa and Mikhail -- a saga of love,'' the daily Izvestia wrote recently.