Kremlin Is Disappointed With Reagan

Kremlin officials are expressing sharp disappointment with a wide variety of actions taken by President Reagan since he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met last November in Geneva.

Gorbachev’s reluctance to fix a date for a second summit conference reflects his doubts about prospects for agreement with the United States in the Geneva nuclear weapons talks, his aides assert.

While agreements on cultural, scientific and commercial issues made by Reagan and Gorbachev during their November conference are being carried out without difficulty, there is no sign of progress on a second summit that the two leaders agreed to hold in Washington in 1986.

In the last month, the Soviet media have adopted a much harsher tone toward the President and his policies than they did during the weeks after the 1985 summit.

Without using the term made notorious by Reagan himself, national newspapers have depicted the United States as an evil empire, seeking to extend its sway by brute force in the international arena.

Propaganda Blitz

The new anti-American propaganda blitz has resurrected many of the cliches of similar campaigns in the past, charging, among other things, that millions of Americans suffer from government repression or indifference while a few millionaires grow rich from military contracts.

A renewed portrayal of the United States as a warmonger began in early March and has continued almost without letup, right up to Tuesday’s official comdemnation of U.S. military attacks on Libyan targets. Popular magazines, including science fiction publications, have joined in what appears to be a concerted press campaign.

Even Reagan’s younger son, Ronald, recently was the target of an attack in the satirical magazine Krokodil for a months-old article in Playboy about last year’s May Day celebration in Moscow.

Saturday’s U.S. nuclear test in Nevada triggered a new round of condemnation of the United States, partly to make propaganda points in light of the Soviet Union’s self-imposed moratorium on such tests.

“The very hopes of mankind for a nuclear-free life have been detonated,” Pravda, the central organ of the Communist Party, said in a typical commentary.

Despite the harsh rhetoric, preparations continue in Moscow for broadening cultural and scientific exchanges and the establishment of an American consulate in Kiev.

Work on the start of service to Moscow and Leningrad by Pan American Airways, with comparable Aeroflot flights to New York and Washington, also is proceeding smoothly.

But U.S. officials apparently have been jolted by Gorbachev’s pointed refusal to commit himself to dates for visiting the United States this year.

“We’re just kind of stewing around,” said one diplomatic source involved in the maneuvering. “We want to get the damn thing scheduled.”

One Western diplomat said that Gorbachev and other top officials may have been too busy with the recent 27th Soviet Communist Party Congress to decide on his travel plans for the coming months.

It also may be possible that the Kremlin is holding back because it hopes to obtain an American concession in return for agreement on a summit timetable, the diplomat added.

The American demand for a sharp cutback in the number of Soviet diplomats at the Soviet Union’s missions to the United Nations and last week’s passage of two U.S. Navy ships through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea also have drawn sharp criticism here.

“In a nutshell, this is a direct sabotage of the results achieved in Geneva,” the weekly Literary Gazette said of the U.S. move to reduce the size of the Soviet U.N. missions.

Vladimir B. Lomeiko, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, charged that Reagan has made “crude anti-Soviet attacks” in appealing for increased funds for rebels fighting the Marxist regime in Nicaragua.