Summit May Have to Wait: Soviet Official : Key Adviser on U.S. Affairs Calls Reagan ‘Provincial Ideologist’

A prominent Soviet official attacked President Reagan today as “a provincial ideologist” raised on anti-communist lies and Nazi propaganda, and suggested that superpower negotiations might have to wait until the end of Reagan’s term in office.

Georgi K. Arbatov, director of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, said, “One would not like to see our two countries, confronted with so many complicated and dangerous problems, lose another two years--until the next presidential elections.

The Soviet official, a key adviser on U.S. affairs, accused Reagan of moving since the Reykjavik summit a month ago from “talks to rabid anti-Sovietism” and said it is impossible to trust the American President’s word.

The biting attack apparently was prompted by a Reagan speech Tuesday in which he called for support of those fighting “the sea of darkness,” phrasing reminiscent of his earlier label of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

‘Provincial Ideologist’

“What Ronald Reagan said on Nov. 18 creates the impression he is reverting to his original role of a provincial ideologist nurtured on anti-communist falsehoods and arcane quotations,” Arbatov said.

The quotations, he said, include some quotes “cited by him every now and then, which had been borrowed from a booklet cooked up by Goebbels’ hacks way back during the Second World War.”

The reference to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, follows a diplomatic row between Moscow and West Germany over a similar reference.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s comparison of the public relations skills of Goebbels and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev outraged the Kremlin. West German visits were canceled, and an apology was extracted from Bonn.

‘To Distract Public Attention’

“It is too obvious that the President is thundering with biblical wrath primarily in a bid to encourage his followers and himself and simultaneously to distract public attention from the serious troubles of the Administration,” Arbatov said.

The Soviet official accused Reagan of first “lying” about the results of the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev and now deciding to deny there was any agreement.

“One does not have to be a clairvoyant to understand the reasons for this outrageous behavior,” Arbatov said. “They want to provoke us, to thwart dialogue with our own hands and to bury the talks they don’t need.”

Arbatov’s bitterly personal attack on Reagan recalled articles during the cold period of U.S.-Soviet relations in the President’s first term.