From Russia, With Profits

By Jay Peterzell/Washington

Though Ronald Reagan has long since muted his language about the "evil empire," the White House has never stopped sounding alarms about the Soviets' drive to buy -- or steal -- Western defense technology. Soviet espionage, U.S. officials warn, is eroding the West's lead in high-tech weapons and saving the Kremlin millions of dollars in military research. To keep computers and other products with possible military uses from finding their way into the East bloc, the U.S. and its Western allies have imposed elaborate trade restrictions.

But some American scientists and business executives point out that the drive to acquire technology, military and otherwise, is very much a two-way street. "We are conditioning ourselves to assume that just because the Soviets want to buy or steal our technology, they have nothing of value for us to buy or steal," says John Kiser, who heads a Washington firm that specializes in finding new plastics technology in the East bloc and helping U.S. companies negotiate licensing agreements. "Most people don't realize there's high tech over there to be brought in."

Already a surprisingly long list of U.S. businesses and scientific projects use technology from Communist countries. Some examples:

-- A Soviet-designed "radio-frequency quadropole" device is a crucial element in the neutral-particle-beam weapon on which research is now being ( conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory under the Strategic Defense Initiative program. The device is used to focus and accelerate atomic particles.

-- Ocean Spray, of Plymouth, Mass., is experimenting with a Soviet technique for extracting more juice and color from cranberries. The process involves briefly electrifying the berries with an oscillating current that ruptures cell membranes.

-- Multi-Arc Scientific Coatings, of St. Paul, has built a thriving international business (1987 sales: $10 million) by using a Soviet technique for coating metal implements with gold-colored titanium nitride. The superhard coating protects drill bits and other parts from wear and corrosion, increasing their life-span from threefold to 30-fold.

-- Czechoslovak scientists have made several advances in plastics. Bausch & Lomb used materials and techniques patented by the Czechs to produce the first soft contact lenses. Now Czech researchers say they have invented a plastic that can withstand temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees F. American aerospace firms are interested in using it in rocket nozzles.

If these breakthroughs seem to defy the stereotype of the East bloc as a technological wasteland, it may be because Communist economies are extraordinarily uneven. "There are peaks of genuine achievement and troughs of appalling backwardness," observes Julian Cooper, a lecturer in Soviet studies at England's University of Birmingham. "The Soviets are often quite good at basic research. The problem is getting that technology into production."

Both East and West might make significant advances by expanding their modest contacts in high-tech fields. Says Multi-Arc Chairman Peter Flood: "If we were prepared to let them benefit from our production-engineering expertise in exchange for the scientific contribution they can make, the whole world would be better off."