A Party to Remember

Over there was Norman Mailer chatting with Yoko Ono. Through the lobby strode Gregory Peck wearing a name card. Gregory Peck with a name card? Where are we? Claudia Cardinale was a stunning sight in a tailored black-and-white-striped suit. Peter Ustinov moved grandly about, with all the bearing and intonation of one of his best-known characters, Inspector Hercule Poirot. "I can't believe it," said an awed American tourist as she gawked around the lobby of the Kosmos Hotel. "This could be Hollywood." Or, the way things are these days, it could be Moscow -- and, of course, it was.

Celebrity bashes are not the Kremlin's forte, but last week's coming- out party for Mikhail Gorbachev was worthy of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The stars that shone at the glamorous gala ranged from literature (Graham Greene) through economics (John Kenneth Galbraith) to fashion (Pierre Cardin). The only common denominator seemed to be that the guests had world-size reputations and were willing to give a polite hearing to the Kremlin's pitch for peace.

Much serious work was done at dozens of closed sessions, and Actor Peck described the whole event as a "very positive happening." But there was also some serious partying. Between meetings the visitors found time to schmooze and booze with their hosts, take in the sights and visit the Bolshoi and other Moscow theaters. The best place for stargazing was the cavernous marble lobby of the Kosmos Hotel, where Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov shuffled between round-table discussions and Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko appeared one morning in a bright red suit. Black Volga sedans and Chaika limousines waited outside the three designated hotels to ferry around the visiting VIPs, but many of the stars preferred to troop onto buses in a display of good comradeship.

At one reception Gorbachev shook hands with Yoko Ono and praised the contributions she and her late husband John Lennon had made to the peace movement. Mailer quipped that he had "cemented a peace pact" over dinner with Novelist Gore Vidal, with whom he has frequently feuded. Ustinov complained that a reporter from Radio Luxembourg woke him at 2 a.m. to ask what Gorbachev was going to say in a speech later that day. Everyone feasted on mounds of fresh strawberries -- a delicacy virtually unheard of in midwinter Moscow.

Back home in the U.S., meanwhile, the nation was watching endless hours of the television mini-series Amerika, in which Kris Kristofferson played the leader of a guerrilla movement opposing Soviet rule of the U.S. And where was Kris himself last week? Why, at the Moscow bash, listening to Gorbachev's speech. What better way to conquer America than with a peace party?