3 SOVIET SINGERS BEGINNING U.S. TOUR

U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange, generally thought to be a dead issue, is alive and limping along. Quietly, but persistently.

Three Soviet singers arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday from Moscow for a one-week, five-city American concert tour that begins tonight in unassuming Fairfax High School Auditorium and ends June 9 at glamorous Carnegie Hall.

Their appearance comes despite the lapse, five years ago, of a formal cultural agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union that had permitted a steady interchange of stellar performers traveling from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 stopped renewal negotiations, and that country’s shooting down of a Korean Air Lines jet three years later seemed to close the book for good. Indeed, government-sponsored tours have since ceased altogether.

But the path of cultural exchange is being kept open by a little-known network of organizations worldwide.

Through the efforts of the San Francisco-based Russart Travel Service, the three Soviet singers, all presently citizens of the U.S.S.R., will make their American debut with the blessings--if not the cooperation--of their government.

The unheralded program is designed for the local Soviet-emigre audience (advertisements have been printed only in Russian, and the event is nearly sold out), but the fact that these performers are allowed to be here, performing, indicates that cultural commerce continues without official sanction.

Anatoly Solovianenko, a tenor with the Kiev Opera, and two pop singers, Evgeny Martinov and Editha Piekha, are here thanks to Russart, a private organization that specializes in arranging travel between the United States and the Soviet Union.

“We’ve been doing this for 12 years,” boasts Victor Rozinov, vice president of Russart. “During the detente period (in the ‘70s), business was booming.” Despite the Afghanistan invasion and the Korean Air Lines tragedy, Rozinov points out that “activity has never been down to zero.”

How does it work? Russart, Rozinov explains, is one of several groups in the United States that have developed “very good relationships” with organizations within the Soviet Union bearing such surprising names as the Peace Committee and Friendship Society.

“We approach these groups, or some of our individual contacts, directly, and they make the arrangements,” he says matter-of-factly. “We’ve had no trouble getting visas. So far, we have not been turned down.”

Of course, it isn’t all that simple, says Anatoly Fradis, the local producer of the concert tonight. Fradis, 37, a former Soviet film director, emigrated in 1980, and now runs a foreign film distribution company in Beverly Hills.

“First, of course, an artist must get permission to leave,” he explains. “We had to work around the (Soviet) government’s policy of keeping all contact with their culture away from the emigre communities. If the authorities knew this concert was not for a general American audience, they would never have let the singers go.”

Next, there is the actual leave-taking. “Soviet artists always receive their passports the day of their flight--I got mine 45 minutes before. It’s just the bureaucratic style there.

“Once the performers leave, they (the authorities) will brag about how this or that group is traveling as an official delegation.

“But what they don’t tell you is that these individuals are forced to pay their own way and arrange for their own housing.” Such, Fradis says, is the case with this tour, which continues with concerts in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York.

But why were these performers permitted to travel at all, considering the risk of defections and anti-Soviet demonstrations along the way? “No one understands why some (artists) are allowed to go and others not,” Fradis answers. “We don’t even know on which level the decision was made.

“Maybe this concert was allowed as a test: Will there be demonstrations?” Fradis says he is not expecting trouble, citing abundant security and a general lack of fanfare .

Nor are defections probable. “Don’t forget,” he notes, “anyone who comes to America has family members as hostages back home.”

Despite such cynicism, there is optimism in Washington that a formal exchange agreement will be reached sometime this year.

“Slow progress” is being made in current negotiations taking place in Moscow, according to John Zimmerman, a State Department official specializing in bilateral affairs. “We’ll probably reach a settlement before the fall summit (between President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev).”

Zimmerman noted that there has been some travel by American performers to the Soviet Union. Singer John Denver was there last November and will return in June.

As Fradis points out, Russart and other private organizations may continue to import lesser-known Soviet performers for Soviet audiences here, but without financial and diplomatic support from both governments, the big-name artists can never hope to travel.

To concert promoters such as Wayne Shilkret, director of performing arts at Ambassador Auditorium, the distinction between major and minor Soviet artists is crucial. “Americans now are only interested in the spectacular names--the Bolshoi, (Sviatoslav) Richter, (Lazar) Berman. The box-office strength of Soviet artists has slackened off, because the public hasn’t heard them in so long.

“We are dealing in megabucks now,” Shilkret adds. “We (the Ambassador Cultural Foundation) will only deal with the major agencies, the ones with the track records--Columbia Artists, and Jacques Leiser.” Groups such as Russart, then, have little impact with major concert presenters.

“The singers we’re presenting in America this week are well-established show people in Russia, but they are small potatoes to Americans,” Fradis admits.