Soviet Union

By John Greenwald

Events in Moscow last week seemed like scenes from a world turned upside down. Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov, who recently returned from seven years of internal exile, was invited to a nuclear disarmament conference at the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Soviet police arrested Yuri Churbanov, the son-in-law of former Leader Leonid Brezhnev, and jailed him on bribery and corruption charges. In addition, officials freed more than 40 political prisoners, the largest dissident group to be released in three decades, and announced that some 500 people, most of them Jews, have been granted exit visas. Only 900 people were allowed to emigrate during all of 1986.

Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union has become a bewildering place for Westerners accustomed to a country where rigidity has been as eternal as February snows in Siberia. A group of eminent Americans arrived in Moscow last week for a firsthand look at the new and changing world of Soviet Communism that Gorbachev is trying to build. The Soviet Foreign Ministry and the Soviet Academy of Sciences had invited the eleven-member delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations, an elite, Manhattan-based organization devoted to world affairs (see following story). As hosts, the Soviets agreed to assume the trip's costs. After being whisked about in Chaika limousines to meetings with Gorbachev and other leaders, the group was cautious but impressed. "The Soviets are much, much more open than when I negotiated with them in the past," said Henry Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford. Concurred Harold Brown, Jimmy Carter's Defense chief: "It's really quite a remarkable change."

The highlight of the five-day visit was a three-hour session with Gorbachev that one American termed "a lively give-and-take." The Communist Party General Secretary took a hard line on U.S.-Soviet relations. Calling the current bitter feelings between Washington and Moscow "unworthy of great nations," he blamed the impasse on groups in the U.S. "to which hostility is % profitable." Gorbachev spoke broadly of "forces that need the U.S.S.R. as an 'enemy image' and use the high-powered information media to sow hatred toward the Soviet people." The Soviet leader still had hopes of holding arms-control talks with the U.S. But he harbored serious doubts about the political strength of President Reagan, who probably will have to contend with Iranscam for the next two years.

Despite a general mood of friendliness during the visit, there were tense moments. At one point some members on tight schedules, including Kissinger, were so disturbed by Soviet slowness in arranging promised meetings with Gorbachev and other leaders that they threatened to return home. That spurred a flurry of activity, and soon the program was full. The group eventually also saw Sakharov, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Anatoli Dobrynin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission.

The visiting Americans and their hosts engaged in good-natured sparring throughout the week. Spotting Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was Reagan's outspoken United Nations Ambassador until 1985, a top Soviet propaganda official boomed: "You have said very many critical things about us. Let us discuss them." Gorbachev was courtly with General David Jones, a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declaring that "I very often quote from your remarks." The Soviet leader had a barbed compliment for Kissinger, the architect of the Nixon Administration's policy of U.S.-Soviet detente. Said he: "You are the author of many interesting things that are still operative. But some people, with your participation, are now trying to dismantle them."

The developments in the Soviet Union last week were typical of the now- you-see-it, now-you-don't liberalization taking place under Gorbachev. The invitation to Sakharov to attend a Kremlin disarmament forum this week could provide Gorbachev with a prestigious ally in his antinuclear campaign. Thus, it will be a good platform to show off the new Soviet openness in a way that also serves Moscow's interests.

Simultaneously, the Kremlin was also putting forth an unusually hard propaganda line against the U.S. This included publication of a book charging that the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which more than 900 religious cultists took their lives by drinking cyanide-spiked Kool-Aid, was the work of the CIA. TASS also resurrected totally fantastic and absurd allegations that the AIDS virus was created by U.S. scientists in a Maryland germ-warfare laboratory.

Still, the Kremlin had plenty of invective left for its enemies at home. In arresting Churbanov, 50, Brezhnev's son-in-law and First Deputy Minister of the Interior from 1980 to 1984, Moscow continued its crackdown on official misdeeds. Gorbachev has repeatedly attacked lax ethical standards under Brezhnev, who died in 1982, and has given top priority to rooting out corruption. If convicted, Churbanov could face 15 years in prison or even death for accepting bribes.

While no one knows how far Gorbachev's reforms will eventually go, any Communist society places inevitable limits on democratic change. Members of the visiting U.S. delegation were naturally wary. Kirkpatrick saw "small movement but large hope in the Soviet Union." She added, "There's clearly a will to new approaches, although the specifics are still less clear. But this new thinking should be taken seriously."

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow