U.S. and Soviet Citizens to Tell Views in TV ‘Summit’

Americans and Soviets will exchange views on superpower relations Sunday in a one-hour “citizens summit” moderated by talk show host Phil Donahue in Seattle and a Soviet counterpart in Moscow.

The two cities will be linked by satellite so participants in each country will be able to hear the others’ views during the one-hour television program.

About 176 people from each country will get an opportunity to participate, said the Documentary Guild, an independent production company in Massachusetts that worked on the program, and Multimedia Entertainment, Donahue’s production company.

Americans Select Soviets

The Soviets gave the Americans free rein to choose the audience, which will number 350 in each country, said Marilyn O’Reilly, a free-lancer for Multimedia Entertainment who selected both audiences with two co-workers.

In a Leningrad factory, for example, she was told she could interview anyone. The workers were surprised, she said. “I could tell they didn’t know that I would be there.”

Americans were allowed to pick both audiences because otherwise the news media and the public in the United States would question whether the Soviet participants were hand-picked propagandists, O’Reilly said in a telephone interview from Chicago.

At a school for teachers, some Soviets asked why Americans were selecting the audience, and the Soviet host, Vladimir Pozner, “said it was because ‘the Americans don’t trust us,’ ” O’Reilly said. “Everybody laughed. But it’s true. . . . We didn’t try to hide anything.”

Other Soviets selected for the “citizens summit” included dockworkers, university students, fishermen, traffic policemen and several lawyers and doctors.

Soviets Decline

The Soviets were invited to choose the American audience but declined, she said.

O’Reilly said she asked potential participants, “Are you concerned with Soviet-U.S. relations, and are you willing to talk about it on television?”

“I never heard, ‘No, I’m not concerned,’ until I got to Seattle,” O’Reilly said.

In the Soviet Union, “their primary concern is war,” she said. “They don’t want another war, and they think we want it.”

Peace will be a prime topic, but other mutual concerns likely will be discussed during the unrehearsed question-and-answer session, she said.

The program, being broadcast from KING-TV in Seattle and Gosteleradio, Soviet television, in Moscow, will be shown at various times on TV stations across the United States and the Soviet Union.