American Notes THE PRESIDENCY

"Nowadays, if Rip Van Winkle were to fall asleep in the Soviet Union, he would only have time for a very short nap before finding that everything had changed!" It was Ronald Reagan in a familiar mode, the storyteller. But he had an unusual circle of listeners: the foreign affairs committee of the Supreme Soviet. The former President made a five-day tour of the Soviet Union last week, his first visit to the erstwhile Evil Empire since his 1988 summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. He got a warm greeting from Gorbachev at the Kremlin, where the two embraced like old friends. He also squeezed in a quick meeting with Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian federation, who has become one of Gorbachev's radical rivals.