Soviet Union

By John Greenwald

It looked for all the world like a Communist version of the old czarist days, when the most fashionable people of European society were entertained in % glorious style at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. There, amid the winter grayness of Moscow, was a mega-gaggle of the most famous Western cultural and scientific notables, appearing about as classy as one can in an avowedly classless society. But their sudden arrival was hardly because of a glitzy jet-set party. Rather, the celebrities were in town for a three-day forum grandly billed as a conference "For a Nuclear-Free World and the Survival of Mankind."

As the event unfolded, it was soon apparent that the brightest star among the throng of nearly 1,000 foreigners and more than 300 Soviets meeting in the Grand Kremlin Palace was Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Indeed, so firmly did Gorbachev bestride the event that many observers professed to be dazzled. Said Novelist Gore Vidal, whose tongue is usually coated with acerbity: "The only interesting political moves in the world right now are being made by Gorbachev. History seems to be moving again, and I want to get a sense of it."

Beyond the glitter, the latest steps in Gorbachev's drive to reform Soviet society produced a mosaic of hopeful and chilling signs. While the Kremlin leader continued to plump for peace and told his visitors that Moscow was sincere in its "new approach to humanitarian problems," the Soviet bureaucracy seemed as stolid as ever. Officials issued confused and conflicting statements about Iosif Begun, an ailing Jewish dissident who at week's end was finally released after a 40-month confinement. As the Begun drama proceeded, perhaps a thousand political prisoners remained in detention in Soviet prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

Gorbachev's blitz continued through the week. The day after his speech to the Moscow forum, the Soviet leader embarked on a tour of the independent- minded Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia. The visit was his first to an ethnic region since last December's Kazakhstan riots (see following story). Accompanied by his wife Raisa and Soviet television crews, Gorbachev waded into a crowd in Riga, the Latvian capital, and told the people, "We've got a lot to do."

Other displays of Gorbachev's new style were evident. In Geneva, Soviet negotiators surprised their U.S. counterparts by offering for the first time to permit on-site inspection of arsenals of chemical weapons. Soviet television carried a frank documentary of last spring's Chernobyl nuclear disaster that showed villagers being evacuated and was sharply critical of the way the disaster was handled. .

Moscow's nonstop diplomatic offensive is creating interest in the West, particularly in Western Europe. In London a Marplan survey suggested that Gorbachev is overtaking an Iranscam-weakened Ronald Reagan in the battle for public opinion. Among British respondents, 30% said they trusted Reagan more than the Communist boss to end the arms race, vs. 27% who put faith in Gorbachev.

The Soviet leader played adroitly on nuclear fears in an hourlong address to his guests that was punctuated by 19 ovations. Accusing the Reagan Administration of trying to scrap the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty by early deployment of a space-based defense system, Gorbachev declared, "When the treaty is annulled, the nuclear arms race will acquire new dimensions, and will be accompanied by an arms race in space." When his call for a ban on space weapons met a muted response, Gorbachev ad-libbed, "I counted on more fervent applause, but that was sufficient." The crowd responded with a prolonged ovation.

The unquestioned co-star of the Moscow forum was Physicist Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet Union's most prominent dissident. Released from seven years of internal exile only last December, Sakharov joined the applause during Gorbachev's talk. In a private session with other scientists, he gave a ten- minute speech in which he called for a "more open and democratic Soviet Union" and attacked Reagan's Star Wars proposal. "Sakharov looked strong, he was energetic, he was vigorous," said John Holdren, an energy expert from the University of California, Berkeley. "He comes across as tough and as independent-minded as ever."

Not even Sakharov, however, could lend dignity to the bumbling spectacle that Soviet officialdom provided over the release of Jewish Dissident Begun, who was imprisoned in 1983 for disseminating anti-Soviet literature. Just days after police allowed thugs to beat Moscow demonstrators calling for Begun's freedom, Georgi Arbatov, director of the U.S.A. and Canada Institute, announced on CBS's Face the Nation that Begun had been freed. Family members immediately protested that the 55-year-old Hebrew teacher remained in Chistopol prison, 500 miles from Moscow. Conceding that the case had remained under review, officials released Begun on Friday, one day after Psychiatrist Anatoli Koryagin was freed.

Though details remain murky, Begun apparently balked at signing what he thought was an admission of guilt before his release. He may have been . pardoned without signing a document in which the dissident pledges to refrain from future "anti-Soviet" activity. Sakharov, who was exiled for publicly condemning the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has said that no conditions were attached to his release.

While Gorbachev was acquiring new credentials as a media superstar last week, doubts lingered in many Western circles about what he is doing. In London, Zhores Medvedev, an exiled Soviet biologist and the twin brother of Soviet Historian Roy Medvedev, saw a cynical purpose behind the freeing of dissidents. "The peace conference makes the sudden release of Sakharov and the other political prisoners more explainable," Medvedev said. "It wouldn't have made much sense to have this meeting with so many people in jail."

Indeed, skepticism echoed last week across much of Europe. French Human Rights Minister Claude Malhuret ridiculed the show-business quality of the peace forum. Said he: "I am quite indignant about this big-production film with Gorbachev as the Tarzan of human rights. It is quite astonishing that we can still be had by that kind of staging." Volker Ruhe, defense spokesman for West Germany's ruling Christian Democrats, concurred: "The U.S. is making things too easy on Gorbachev. For the moment, he is the master of an empty stage."

In Washington, Reagan Administration officials stressed that the Soviet leader's reform efforts seem to be in earnest, and avoided dashing hopes for better U.S.-Soviet ties. "The Soviets are interested in progress in bilateral relations, and so are we," declared a State Department official. He said the Reagan Administration is considering a request, quietly delivered two weeks ago by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, for a joint study of the key issues that divide the two countries.

The most enthusiastic official Western response to Gorbachev came from Hans- Dietrich Genscher, West Germany's Foreign Minister. He has called on the West "to take Mr. Gorbachev and his new policy literally." Genscher last week saw the opportunity for "great, unused possibilities in economic cooperation," adding that Gorbachev's speech showed that "both East and West must understand themselves as a community of survivors."

For all the attention that Gorbachev continues to win abroad, he faces opposition at home from the grass-roots to the highest political levels. Many workers regard his program as just an attempt to boost productivity by getting ! them to work harder. For some Soviet workers on multiple shifts, that means leaving the job in the early hours of the morning only to find that buses have stopped running. Many also miss the vodka that is now scarce under antialcoholism edicts that have earned Gorbachev the nickname "Secretary for Mineral Water."

Cynical voices can be heard across the Soviet Union. In Tashkent a 33-year- old construction-project manager named Volodya flatly declared, "Gorbachev's not going to change this country. We don't work very hard, and we can't be forced to work hard." By contrast, in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a 35- year-old singer offered the opinion that Gorbachev's reform effort "just doesn't go far enough" and compared it to a "small bulldozer scraping away at Mount Everest."

Zhenya, a Samarkand factory hand, offered a similar assessment: "Only a very small number of people have been affected by the changes under Gorbachev -- the intellectuals in Moscow and a few managers who have been charged with corruption." A Moscow construction worker agreed: "Gorbachev's got big problems. If he wants people to work harder, he's got to reward them with higher pay. But just giving people more money won't be enough, because there's nothing to buy."

Gorbachev also faces troubles within the party. While he has threatened to crack down on money-losing factories and thus throw people out of work, some opponents regard that as breaking a fundamental rule of socialism. Says Martin McCauley, a veteran Kremlin watcher who is a professor at the University of London: "Gorbachev is first among equals, but he's not a dictator. He has to fight for his policies." Notes Arthur Hartman, the departing U.S. Ambassador in Moscow: "This is not an easy society to shape in any way. You can imagine in this society that there are people who have benefited from the status quo, who want to continue to benefit from it."

Gorbachev, though, seems determined. He underscored that two weeks ago, when he told a group of senior Soviet journalists, " If the ((Central Committee)) plenary meeting had convened and arrived at the conclusion that reconstruction does not justify itself and it should be rejected, I would have said, 'I cannot work otherwise.' "

With so much activity going on in the Soviet Union, the watchword of many Western experts remains caution. "We must exercise a double vigilance," says French Foreign Minister Jean-Raimond, who was Ambassador to Moscow from late 1985 until early last year. "On the one hand, we must be watchful for everything that is new and not assume that nothing is going to change in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, we must make sure that we do not succumb to illusions or make concessions costly to the interests of the West."

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Paris and Ken Olsen/Moscow