"Something Is Happening Here"

By MICHAEL MANDELBAUM

Michael Mandelbaum, director of the Project on East-West Relations at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a member of the delegation that visited Moscow. He is also coauthor, with TIME's Strobe Talbott, of the new book Reagan and Gorbachev. Mandelbaum wrote this report on the trip for TIME:

"You've come at an exciting time," one of the Soviet officials said as he greeted us. Indeed we had. Something is happening here.

The week before our arrival Mikhail Gorbachev had made a major speech at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He blasted the outmoded practices of the past, stressed his determination to proceed with the changes already in motion and proposed some startling innovations in the Soviet political system, including competitive elections for important posts.

The impact of Gorbachev's policies was apparent everywhere we went: in the stately meeting hall of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; in the ornate guesthouse of the Foreign Ministry; in the homey, book-lined apartment of Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner; and in the conference room of the headquarters of the Central Committee where, with pictures of Marx and Lenin peering down at us, we had a three-hour meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Russian term for the new program is "perestroika," restructuring. It includes another frequently used term, "democratization" -- the greater involvement of the Soviet people in the management of their society. An important part of this is a "new way of thinking," which offers far greater room than ever before for fresh ideas, the discussion of previously taboo subjects and official candor. At every meeting we encountered examples of this new thinking.

We were given a straightforward appraisal of the problems of the Soviet economy that could have come from an American economist. Western observers often tell stories of bizarre inefficiencies, like the setting of the price of children's clothing so low that taxi drivers buy it to clean their windshields. But this story came from a high party official.

We had candid discussions of the two sides' positions in the arms-control talks, in which Soviet officials explored positions beyond those their government has officially taken and about which they disagreed with one another.

We heard references to a broad range of new economic initiatives, including previously forbidden ideas such as competition, market pricing and profit. An important figure in the Soviet establishment characterized the old system of censorship as irrational and outmoded. Perhaps the most vivid example of change was the chance we had to talk with Andrei Sakharov, a meeting that, as % he noted, only two months before could not have taken place. He and his wife were gracious hosts -- he braving the cold and the gaggle of waiting reporters and photographers to greet us outside their apartment building, she serving us tea and homemade cake during our two-hour visit.

A tired-looking man with a gentle, precise manner, Sakharov emphasized the significance of the campaign of democratization and the need for it to continue. The political situation in the Soviet Union is complicated, he noted, and there is certainly opposition to the reforms. But he told us that he considered Gorbachev an able politician whose chances of success in overcoming the opposition he considered good.

In the three hours we spent with Gorbachev he was alternately soft-spoken and forceful, detached and caustic, critical and cordial. Most impressive was the way he conducted the meeting. Unlike the other Soviet officials with whom we met, he did not make a prepared opening statement. Instead, he began by asking questions. He was well briefed about our group and asked different members why they had taken a particular position, made a certain speech or supported a series of American policies. He seemed interested in learning.

He expressed his determination to proceed along the path he has charted within the Soviet Union. He also made clear his interest in improving relations with the U.S. and in reaching an arms-control agreement despite the disarray in Washington, although he also stressed, as did other officials, that it was now up to the American side to respond to Soviet proposals.

His performance was impressive and his message on Soviet-American relations on the whole upbeat. But the session was not entirely devoted to expressions of warm good wishes. Gorbachev spoke with some feeling, verging on bitterness, of what he called the unreliability of the U.S. as an economic and political partner. He was referring to the interruption of a number of bilateral programs -- in response, of course, to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. And a few of his remarks suggested, at least to me, that he has a seriously flawed picture of how American society and the American political system work.

The changes in Soviet life have not touched everybody. The reins by which the leadership controls the society have loosened, but the gates to the world outside remain closed. We met with a group of refuseniks, whose requests to emigrate have still not been granted. Naum Meiman's wife was allowed to go to Washington last month for urgent medical treatment; he has not been able to join her. Benjamin Charny has been trying to leave for eight years. His name was one of five on a special list of cancer victims requesting emigration. There were reports that a large number of long-standing cases like these would be resolved in the next few months. That is perhaps the next major test of the seriousness of the program of democratization.

Still, the changes are unmistakable, and they raise a series of questions for American foreign policy. The most immediate is whether to conclude an arms-control agreement with the Soviet Union that would incorporate some of the measures tentatively agreed to at the Reykjavik summit meeting last October, which would require some compromise on strategic defenses. On this subject Sakharov shares the skepticism of many of his scientific colleagues in the West that an effective space shield to protect populations against nuclear attack can ever be built. Moreover, he fears that efforts to do so will lead to dangerous instability in the nuclear relationship between the two great powers.

The Gorbachev program raises other, broader questions as well: Is it feasible to negotiate successfully to reduce not only nuclear armaments but also the much more costly conventional weapons that both sides deploy in Europe? Has the moment come to try to forge a much more extensive economic relationship with the Soviet Union, an effort that failed in the early 1970s? Is it even possible that the changes Gorbachev has set in motion present an opportunity, which the West has not had since 1945, for a fundamentally different relationship with the Soviet Union?

Something is happening here. To a visitor who was last in Moscow two years ago, just before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the city looks the same but sounds very different. For the West, as well as for the people who live in the Soviet Union, a great deal depends upon whether the noise in the background is the blare of another party propaganda campaign exhorting the people to work harder for the glory of the socialist motherland or whether it is something much rarer and more consequential: the deep seismic rumble of a great state changing course.