THE DAY OF THE SOVIET WATCHERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT .~
' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430002-5
t. .
The Day
Of the
Soviet
Watchers
With the Summit Nearing,'
Experts Are at a Premium
By David Remnick
Washington. Post Staff Writer
With spies defecting, not quite defecting and re-
fecting, with the administration examining every
accumulated nuance for its global import, with the
media regarding the Reagan-Gorbachev summit as if
it were a psychic and political thumb wrestle, every
house-including the White House-wants experts.
Sovietology, like Halley's comet and crawfish
etouffe, is In.
Unlike scholars of, say, the Renaissance lyric,
Sovietologists suddenly find themselves deluged
with phone calls. Jerry Hough, who teaches Soviet
politics at Duke University, said, "I came back to my
office the other day and I had calls from everybody.
Even People magazine."
Yesterday Ronald Reagan called on the Sovie-
tologists. Six of them sat around a table in the Cab-
inet Room. along with George Shultz, Robert McFar-
lane and Caspar Weinberger, spoke briefly on a
range of subjects 'and answered questions from the
president..
Reagan, of course,..has access to Soviet. experts
from the State Department, the CIA and other agen-
cies and may even rehearse for the. summit as he did
for his presidential debates. In his preparations, he
has already met with Richard Nixon and defector
Arkady Shevchenko, the former Soviet diplomat.
. Before yesterday's meeting, however, his only
known outside academic advice on the summit came
from cultural historian Suzanne Massie-who said.
after the meeting, earlier this fall, that the president
"doesn't know anything about the [Soviet] people at
all. He's in the same. position as other Americans,
despite all his advisers ..."
Massie, whose expertise is mainly in the tsarist
period, is a bestselling author but not highly re-
garded as an authority on contemporary Soviet so-
ciety by most in the field. Yesterday's visitors, how-
ever, are among the most prominent names in
Sovietology:
William Hyland, editor of Foreign Affairs and a
former deputy to Henry Kissinger and Brent Scow-
croft; James Billington, author of "The Icon and the
Axe" and director of the Wilson Center; Arnold Ho-
relick, former intelligence officer on Soviet affairs
and director of Soviet studies at the Rand Corp. in
California; Nina Tumarkin, professor at Wellesley
College and an expert on domestic Soviet Politics;
Adam Ulam, professor at Harvard and author of
"The Bolsheviks"; and Richard Pipes, former expert
on Soviet affairs in the Reagan administration, and
now at Harvard.
With the exception of Hyland, who is a moder-
ate on Soviet-American issues, and Tumarkin, who
is relatively?Iiberal; Reagan's guests
have reputations as hard-line ana-
lysts.
.
'It sounds to me like Reagan in-
vited. people. who_ tell him.-things-he
likes to hear," said one scholar who
was not`present at the meeting.
Although it is difficult to draw an
ideological mapof-Sovietology in this
country-the way one might with,
say. economics, putting the capital of
monetarism in Chicago-there are
certain centers for certain view-
points. .
Harvard, dominated by Pipes and
Ulam, has a hard-line reputation as
do such think tanks as the Hoover
Institute at Stanford University and
the Heritage Foundation in Wash-
ington; Columbia University's W.
Averell Harriman Institute, with Se-
weryn Bialer, Marshall Shulman and
Jonathan Sanders,_Princeton Univer-__
sity, with Stephen Cohen, and the
Brookings institution, with Helmut
Sonnenfeldt and Raymond Garthoff,
are considered less rigid.
"But no one in the field has any
illusions about the Soviet Union,"
Sonnenfeldt said. "The differences
come on how susceptible the Rus-
sians may be to internal reform and
on how the United States should deal
With -questions of arms. control and
foreign policy."
Here are four Sovietologists and a
glimpse at some of their particular
concernsleading up-to the summit: -
tephen Cohen is- of of all his col.
leagp ues,.rob._._ably
the'Jead:"ng advocate .
of detente="a_..vety- lonely position
these days" He is unhappy because
"there's' no real-debate-at all anymore
in the country, even among Sovietolo.
gists " A professor at Princeton Uni-
versity, a columnist for The Nation
and a frequent commentator on NBC,
opposite. Richard Pipes, Cohen is the
author of Sovieticus" and a biogra-
phy of Nikolai Bukharin, one of
Stalin's reformist rivals for power in
the 1920s.
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affairs has disappeared. The spec-
trum among Sovietologists has nar-
rowed to those who advocate cold
war, the Right and the administra-
tion, and those who advocate a chilly
war, the faltering Democrats. And
this is mirrored in the media. Take a
show like 'Nightline.' They usually
have one guest who is an adminis-
tration supporter or a hard-on-de-
f9 se Democrat And who is the oth-
L*rguest? A Sovi tMs'if yiotl?cduldn't
find a more moderate American
point` of view before you spillover
"I think a lot of Sovietologists and
politicians are just too cautious, for
political reasons, .ta suggest that
maybe. just maybe, there. are -alter-
natives=to cold war or chilly war..Or
hot.war*for that matter. I can-think-
of a-lot of my-colleagues who were
eonsidered pro-detente 10 years ago
and they just- will not come forward
ih public.now and say the things they
say in private. And I've met with
congressmen who will tell me that they agree with me about the need-
(or points of detente. So I'll say,
'Well, I'll be looking forward to your
speech on the subject.' Forget it.
"Except to criticize rhetoric or
Star Wars, there is no substantial
opposition to Reagan's Soviet poli-
cies at all. Whatever I think of him I
realize that Reagan has been able to
lead this country ideologically and-
politically like no one else-in recent
memory, and as a result a conven-
tional. wisdom exists: 'Detente failed
because the Soviets betrayed us.'
"Think of it. The only political fig-
ure who still uses the term detente is
Richard Nixon! - -- -
"I think a lot of my colleagues
haven't so much gotten-more con-
servative as they've gotten tired of
being bashed over the head and
called nasty names.. I'm- no different.
I get a little tired, believe me, of get-
ting called 'pro-Soviet,'- but the price
of dissent in this country is pretty
cheap. What can they do to us?"
Richard Pipes was the Reagan ad-
ministration's hard-line and most
influential adviser on Soviet affairs
until he left` for Harvard toward the
end of 198. Pipes articulated the
belief, subsequently accepted by the
president; that the Soviet Union faces
severe economic problems and may be
susceptible to pressures from the Unit-
ed States and western Europe for var-
ious reforms. Pipes, the author of
"Survival Is Not Enough," even be-
lieves that in order to preserve its po-
sition, the Soviet elite may one day
have to reform the system substantial-
ly. He once said the lhance for nucle-
ar war was "40 percent "
Swer, quite simply, is Soviet actions
In the past 10 years. Afghanistan,
human rights, how many examples.
do you need?
"You know, no one talked about a
detente or a dialogue with Nazi Ger-
many in 1939-and there was good
reason-for that.
"There is absolutely no evidence
to..suggest that the Soviet leadership
really wants some kind of meaningful
accord. The only optimistic thing in
regard to Gorbachev is that he does
have a realistic view of the economic
situation in his country.
"I won't tell you exactly what I
said to the president at lunch, but if I
had to give him advice in a nutshell it
would be this: I'd say, 'Be cautious
about summits because you're at
such a disadvantage.' The president
has to deal with Congress,' with' pub- -
lic opinion, but the Soviet leader
doesn't have _to worry about- any of
that. While the president hears peo-
pie telling him he must go halfway on -
this or that proposition, Gorbachev
does not have to deal with that. In
essence, Gorbachev can reach over
the president's head." - -
Peter Reddaway will soon become::
secretary of the Kennan Institute for
Advanced Russian Studies in Wash-
ington. A senior lecturer at the Lon-
don School of Economics, Reddaway's
specific area of interest is dissent and
emigration. He is the coauthor of "So-
viet Psychiatric Abuse." In, a tele-
phone interview from London, Red-
daway spoke about 'his current con-
cern-"the areas in which Gorbachev
will allow reform, and where not. "
"Jewish emigration is a rather spe-
cial area because letting people leave
the Soviet Union is not a radical blow
to the status quo. It doesn't actually
liberalize the place except in a mar-
ginal way. Gorbachev was part of the
leadership that clamped down on
Soviet emigration in the '80s but he
has made signals now that emigra-
tion could be used as a kind of polit-
ical bargaining-chip.
"For example, there are rumors
that the Soviets are trying to estab-
lish better relations with the Israelis.
And, recently, the head of the Soviet
state bank met with some western-
ers and said that if trade terms-with
the West were improved and re-, .
laxed, letting 50,000 Jews leave the
country would riot be such a great,
problem.. .
I'm-most pessimistic. on_the ques-
tion of the national minorities, the.
peoples who are looking for.. greater;
autonomy or even real sovereignty,
It's almost impossible for Gorbachev
to make concessions there. If you do
that,-you undermine central control, I
politically and economically.
"I see. the area of oreatest nncci_ I
CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430002-5
the Soviets may ease up on liberal
intellectuals, like Roy Medvedev,
who call for restricted forms of cap-
italism within the overall economy.
You see Gorbachev has two prior-
ities: consolidating his own political
control and improving the economy.
He needs the liberal intelligentsia,
and has dropped hints to that effect.
"But, please, don't get me wrong.
I'm interested in the possibilities of
change within the Soviet Union, but I
think we need a hard line in dealing
with the Russians. The Soviet re-
gime is an inherently expansionist
country, and, no matter how nice we
are to them, that's not. going to
Jonathan Sander`s."silen is a? su
stantial part of his -day at Columbia
University's W . -Averell Harriman:-.
Institute watehing:Tine't ivismissions
of Soviet television:.programs With
the help of a weatherproof 16-foot sat= --
ellite dish (It's red so-- everybody-
knows it's pulling in the Soviet
Union'), he watches Russian exercise
programs, news broadcasts and even
commercials.
"The other night I got up at 4:30
in the morning because I couldn't
wait to see how things were going on
"Vremya," the major evening news
show. It was the night they finally
gave out information on the Soviets'
interview with Reagan, and- it was
fascinating to see how they handled
it. There were plenty of reports here
in the States about how Izvestia ed-
ited out certain passages, but the
television version-and television is
how most people are getting their
news now-was incredible.
"The correspondent just got on .
the air and gave a two-minute spiel.
First he blasted Reagan for his com-
ments on Vietnam. Then the guy
said, 'If he can't understand the past,
how is he going to understand the
future?' Right after that he did try to
emphasize how Reagan said he was
hoping for world peace, and so on.
"But-there was no footage. No real.
details of what the president actually
said. It would be as if some major
American correspondent had an in-
terview with Gorbachev but did
nothing but publish a tiny commen-
tary. -
"There's always a lot of anticipa-
tory journalism in this country. You
know, 'How will this or that affect
the summit?' The Soviets hardly
ever get into that sort of thing on
television. But you're starting to see
it now in very subtle ways. They will
make little comments on stories
about -how something may or may
not affect the 'meeting at the highest
level'-which is the term they use
for summit. You still see a lot of neg-
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ative imagery about the United
States-antinuclear protests in Eu-
rope, men on subway grates and so
on-but they, seem to be tempering
it a bit with things like Humphrey
the Whale.
"To tell you the truth, though, I've
been just as interested in another
Soviet television phenomenon these
days, and that's the idea of commer-
cials. They schedule about six or sev-
en of them together and list them in
the magazine I call TV Guide-ski. I
love the one about a multifunctional
children's seat. The motto is: 'If he's
old enough to sit, let him sit comfort-
ably.'
"I saw a fantastic antismoking
commercial recently that showed a
guy shooting himself with a contrap-
tion that looked like a shotgun that
shoots deadly cigarettes. The guy
blows his own head off and the voice-
over says, 'Every time you smoke,
you're killing yourself.'
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430002-5