America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott MOSCOW

Once upon a time, the surest way for a Western journalist to end an interview with a Soviet official was to ask about factionalism in the Kremlin, shortages in the stores or rumors of unrest somewhere in the south. The official's face, hardly radiant to begin with, would become a mask of reproof that emitted, like a recorded announcement, a curt lecture on the inadmissibility of slander against the U.S.S.R. and interference in its internal affairs.

Nowadays Soviets want to talk about nothing but their domestic situation. The more alarming the subject and the gloomier the prospect, the more they have to say. Topic A is the stagnation of the economy. Topic B is the eruption of the nationality problem. Topic C is how terrible it is that A and B should be happening at the same time.

Soviet foreign-policy specialists, who several years ago relished debating geopolitics and ballistic-missile throw weight, would now rather lament the surfeit of nearly worthless rubles or the possibility that the Communist Party will split into two (or six or 20) new parties.

As seen from Moscow, every silver lining has a cloud. There was something distinctly sour, even ominous, about last week's May Day demonstrations in Red Square. Some banners demanded faster and bolder progress toward a free market (A NEW SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORDER NOW!), while others warned that resistance is already building to the hardships reform will entail, especially inflation and unemployment (FOOD IS NOT A LUXURY, PROTECT OUR JOBS!). Mikhail Gorbachev, who must reconcile that contradiction in the months ahead, left the reviewing stand atop Lenin's tomb, as jeers rose from the crowd below.

The official banners that failed to brighten this sad city included two words: glasnost and demokratizatsiya. For the first time in the history of Soviet propaganda, those two words stand for genuine political virtues the leadership has introduced into the life of the citizenry. Yet in private conversation they often resonate with disappointment and foreboding, as though they were euphemisms for the messiness of current events and some vague chaos still to come.

Even the end of the cold war is, at best, Topic D. No wonder Gorbachev is keeping his summit trip to the U.S. later this month as brief as possible. His tough job is here, making peace with, and among, his countrymen. Soviet officials note gratefully that the Bush Administration has refrained from "exploiting the weaknesses" of the U.S.S.R. -- an unthinkable statement a few years ago and a revealing one today.

During a recent trip to the Ural Mountains to drum up support for perestroika, Gorbachev commented to associates that for the first time in his many forays into the heartland, no one had asked him about U.S.-Soviet relations or the threat of global war. The good news, perhaps, was that everyone knows the danger has diminished. The bad news, however, might be that everyone is too obsessed with the scarcity of dairy products, poultry and apartments to notice.

As for Southeast Asia and Central America, those traditional cockpits of superpower rivalry might as well be on the dark side of the moon. There is little regret in Moscow at having lost Nicaragua because few here ever felt they had it in the first place. Not even the famous German question generates much passion. As rapidly as the two Germanys are coming together, the U.S.S.R. is coming apart even faster.

Or so a visitor might think -- unless he remembers where he is. This is Russia, a land of extremes, where history is the stuff of which pessimism is made and where the alternative to the millennium is the apocalypse. Part of Gorbachev's challenge is to introduce modulation into the way the Soviet Union thinks, and talks, about itself. That will be every bit as hard as putting cheese and chickens on the shelves.