America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

VLADIVOSTOK

Barring a typhoon in the Sea of Japan or a full-scale war in the Persian Gulf, a squadron of American warships will steam into Vladivostok's Golden Horn harbor this week for the first visit by the U.S. Navy in more than 50 years. Last week, while a pinafored band practiced The Stars and Stripes Forever in Revolution Square, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was a few blocks away, addressing a conference of about 100 experts on Asia from 19 countries. "Not bad for what is still officially classified as a closed city," remarked Vladimir Kuznetsov, the provincial governor.

Vladivostok (pop. 660,000) is a microcosm of the struggle between the forces of reform and reaction, openness and xenophobia that is seething throughout the U.S.S.R. The city, with its magnificent harbor, could be the commercial gateway to Siberia and the Soviet Far East, which constitute the largest expanse of untapped natural resources in the world. The Maritime Province's fishing and timber industries already earn enough hard currency from exports to have donated Japanese-made sports cars to the region's police, who need the fancy wheels to catch equally well-equipped smugglers and black marketeers.

The Vladivostok city government and growing private sector want to attract foreign capital and credits by creating a "free-enterprise zone." Seoul and Tokyo would be only about an hour away by air -- if international flights were allowed to land here. But Vladivostok is home to the Soviet Pacific fleet, and the naval high command is more concerned with keeping out spies than with $ letting in businessmen -- or any other foreigners. To permit last week's conference, Shevardnadze had to enlist Mikhail Gorbachev's help in overruling the Ministry of Defense.

"We welcome the chance to show some hospitality," says Viktor Tumanov, a foreign-trade official. "But such occasions are still exceptions to the rules. We want the rules changed. The more our people see of the outside world, the more they want to be part of it."

The debate over when to open the city is rapidly becoming an issue in the rivalry between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the hard-charging populist leader of the Russian Federation. During a visit here last month, Yeltsin vowed that if the Soviet government did not lift restrictions permanently and soon, the Russian parliament would do so on its own. As a result, this is now Yeltsin country.

When they arrive this week, the U.S. sailors are likely to be more impressed by the natural beauty of the surroundings than by the Soviet naval power on display in the harbor. There at her moorings is the Minsk, a helicopter carrier of a class that sent the Pentagon into a frenzy of alarm in the 1970s. It is about half the size of the U.S. flattops on duty in the gulf. Nearby are a number of formidable-looking destroyers and guided-missile cruisers, but they are outnumbered by a long row of decrepit submarines literally rusting away at dockside and good for little more than the cannibalization of parts. For years these vessels have figured in Western bean counters' assessments of the Red Menace. When forced upon the Soviet military, glasnost often reveals more waste and weakness than strength.

Vladimir Lukin, a Yeltsin ally in the Russian parliament, told last week's conference, "Vladivostok's biggest secret is that there should be no secrets here." Local citizens applauded vigorously, but the few uniformed officers in attendance scowled in silence.