RAISA GORBACHEV Former first lady of the Soviet Union Related story: Obituary: Raisa Gorbachev

"I had at my disposal only one tradition which took shape in Stalin's day -- the absence of any right to a public, official existence."

Raisa Gorbachev, who as the wife of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev set a new standard for Kremlin first ladies, died September 20 in Germany, where she was receiving treatment for leukemia. She was 67.

Raisa Maximovna Titorenko met Gorbachev at a ballroom dancing class in college. The two were married in September 1953. As Gorbachev climbed the Communist hierarchy in the Russian provinces, his wife earned a doctorate in sociology, taught school and had a daughter.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985, Raisa Gorbachev broke decades of Soviet custom by appearing as a Western-style first lady at her husband's side.

The daughter of a Siberian railway worker, she was the first Kremlin wife to travel with her husband, wear designer clothes and shop with a credit card. Many Russians disliked her, and 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.

After Gorbachev lost his position in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, she conceded their lives had become "a bit more gloomy." She told a Russian newspaper in 1996 that she had begun selling her evening dresses because she no longer needed them.