Who Is Dean Reed?

And why was the Kremlin making such a fuss about him ?

Even the most knowledgeable American pop-music fan would be hard pressed to identify Dean Reed. But in the Soviet Union, the Denver-born country-and-western singer is more popular than Frank Sinatra. His frequent concert tours of Communist countries draw S.R.O. crowds; his songs, which frequently blend Marxist-inspired lyrics with twanging strains of the Nashville sound (one big hit: War Goes On), sell in the millions. Last week the 40-year-old singer gained a new notoriety in his homeland; he turned up as the focus of the Kremlin's latest effort to get back at the U.S. for Jimmy Carter's criticism of the repression of Soviet dissidents.

Last month Reed and 18 other protesters were arrested and jailed in Delano, Minn. They were charged with trespassing on the right of way of a 427-mile high-voltage power line long opposed by many farmers and environmentalists. When word of Reed's arrest was flashed to a shocked Soviet public, the news agency Tass dispatched a special correspondent to cover the trial.

Capitalizing on Reed's popularity, the Soviets also started a drumbeat of staged flackery on the arrested singer's behalf. The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that telegrams "expressing wrath and indignation at the arbitrary rule of U.S. authorities" were pouring in. A quartet of Soviet classical composers fired off a message to the White House prodding Carter to "urgently intervene to put an end to arbitrary action and ensure the release of Dean Reed." Reed helped the cause by refusing to post $300 bail, going on a hunger strike with some of his fellow prisoners and announcing, "I consider myself a political prisoner."

In fact, Reed is an indifferent performer by American standards and a habitual agitator. He left Colorado 20 years ago, after winning fleeting local fame by outrunning a jackass in a 110-mile foot race. Turning up in Latin America, he was arrested in Chile while symbolically laundering an American flag outside the U.S. embassy. Then he moved on to Rome, where he starred in eight spaghetti westerns, and was arrested again in an anti-Viet Nam demonstration. During the 1960s, Reed also made several triumphant tours of the Soviet Union. Audiences there were impressed by his boyish good looks, syrupy baritone and eclectic repertoire of folk, rock and mellow protest songs. He soon had a huge following of Soviet fans, who considered him a "typically American performer."

Declaring himself an "independent Marxist," Reed settled in a plush lakeside villa in East Berlin in 1973 and married an East German; they are now divorced. He has kept his American citizenship and periodically revisited the U.S. He came to Minnesota to promote El Cantor, a movie about a Chilean singer who Reed claims was tortured to death after the fall of Marxist President Salvador Allende.

The Russians clearly expected that Reed would be convicted, thereby justifying their charge that the U.S. crushes dissent. Unfortunately, the jury acquitted Reed and his codefendants. The singer himself hailed the verdict as a "courageous and unpopular decision." The Soviet press reported the acquittal but then fell silent--presumably waiting for another victim of American injustice.

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