Soviet Leader Flies Home to Hopeful Nation

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev came home Friday to a nation that seemed buoyed by hopes that his Geneva summit with President Reagan will lead to better relations with the West.

The government newspaper Izvestia, in its evening edition, took the unusual step of printing front-page interviews with people it said were stopped on Red Square and asked about the summit.

Most expressed satisfaction, pointing especially to the joint declaration that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

While Reagan has said this several times publicly in recent months, it is news to most Soviets to hear that his Administration--often depicted here as warmongering and dictatorial--does not want war.

Gorbachev, who stopped overnight in Prague, Czechoslovakia, after reporting on the summit to his six Warsaw Pact allies, was welcomed at the Moscow airport by President Andrei A. Gromyko and Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.

There was no report by the state-run news media of any homecoming speech by Gorbachev about the summit, the first in decades not attended by Gromyko, the former foreign minister.

Soviet newspapers gave the summit heavy coverage, printing the text of the joint U.S.-Soviet agreement on the front page and emphasizing particularly Gorbachev’s Geneva news conference.

The Prague meeting also was covered prominently.

Media here paid little attention to Raisa Gorbachev. Soviet journalists did not go to her Geneva teas with U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan.

For the third day running, the news media dropped anti-American invective. The official news agency Tass ran lengthy quotes from Reagan’s report on Geneva to Congress in Washington, without adverse comment.

No media interpretation of the summit has emerged so far. Gorbachev’s opening statement at his news conference, which appeared in all newspapers, seemed intended to guide Soviets in their assessment of the Geneva meetings.