HEY, WHAT IF WE BEAT THE RUSSIANS?

In response to the hype over ABC’s “Amerika” miniseries, Calendar took the premise and flipped it over--and contacted a wide variety of sources on. . . .

What would happen if the United States had conquered the Soviet Union?

Would life in the Soviet Union be all peanut-butter sandwiches and Bruce Springsteen?

What about American fashions, Disneyland, Charlie Brown cartoons and Tupperware parties?

ENQUIRING RUSSKIES WANT TO KNOW, TOO

“I think a lot of our regular subjects would go over great with the Russians,” explained National Enquirer reporter Michael Glynn, who’d just returned to L.A. from covering Liberace’s death in Palm Springs. “J.R. Ewing, for instance, would probably become a Soviet folk hero. I think his style would play very well over there--he’s a crafty, domineering leader, and great at obfuscating the truth.

“And think of what a great story angle Pia Zadora would be. She’s the peasant girl who makes good by marrying a wealthy American industrialist.”

Glynn predicted that the Soviets would also find many of the Enquirer’s regular features--such as diet and arthritis tips--particularly fascinating. “You get the impression that, as a nation, the Russians are probably overweight from eating those potatoes all winter long,” he said. “So we could do lots of secret Russkie diet plans.

“Also, one of our key formulas is appealing to people by saying, ‘You think you’ve got troubles--just look what problems big celebrities have.’ So where could you find a more receptive audience than the Russian people, who really do have it bad!”

But would what the Soviets make of the Enquirer after having been fed a steady diet of controlled information? “I think they’d really embrace it. Our kind of journalism fits their Marxist notion of the working-class hero--we do lots of wacky pieces about personal heroics, like first-person accounts of a man battling a killer shark or a dog saving his blind master. So I think we could adapt easily. We’d just find a guy who’d been saved from a runaway tractor on a collective farm.”

THE HIGH COST OF CONQUEST

‘The cost of running the Soviet Union would exceed our financial capabilities. The U.S.S.R. could milk us of our wealth,” said Richard Pipes, a Harvard history teacher who was director of East European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council in 1981-82.

“There is probably no other country that we are less interested in or less capable of running than the Soviet Union, except China.

“A few thousand Americans couldn’t possibly govern a country the size of the U.S.S.R. and we don’t have cadres of Russians or minorities to rely on. Instead, we’d face violent nationalist reactions.”

Many Russian emigres in the U.S. “don’t understand our economic system or political system nor like it very much--and many are dissidents who asked to leave the U.S.S.R. Imagine the local population? They wouldn’t understand.”

The Russians love American mass culture, “but it’s penetrating anyway, without an occupation.” And how could they pay for designer jeans and VCRs? “They have a currency that isn’t convertible. Even under the present system, they’re short of currency. Economically, it doesn’t make sense.”

America would want to put in place a “reasonable Russian government and get out. We would never want a long-term occupation,” said Pipes, “unlike the Soviets, who never leave an occupied country.”

LEARNING TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL . . .

” ’ Coca-Cola-inization ‘ has already begun; we don’t need to invade,” said Arnold Beichman, a political scientist at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. “I went to a Moscow nightclub recently and listened to a band playing heavy-metal music. Moscow doesn’t jam Radio Free Europe’s Sunday rock concerts in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

“The sleeping Soviet giant would awaken under a decade of an American-style free market. Unstead of squeezing the consumer, because of its enormous huge military budget, the new Soviet society will have no more ubiquitous food lines or empty shelves,” said Beichman, author of the biography “Yuri Andropov.”

“The Georgian peasant will no longer have to sneak into Moscow to sell peaches on the black market.” He predicted that drinking will decrease because frustrated people will have “creative outlets.”

“Soviet health care is atrocious,” said Beichman, “for everyone but the Communist Party elite. Cancer, heart, elderly and handicapped patients receive primitive treatment. The average Russian woman has five or six abortions because contraceptives are inadequate--pills are impure, diaphragms are poor quality and condoms are badly made.”

In 10 years, Beichman predicted, the Americans will develop a “genuine Soviet people’s medical care--with modern medical treatment and drugs such as Tagamet, beta blockers and decongestants.”

MISCHA MOUSE

The folks at Disney have a sharp eye for profit centers. Dennis Despie, v.p. of entertainment for Disneyland and Walt Disney World, sees the possibilities in a park over there: “If the Soviets aren’t keen on this American takeover, at least they’d have a new place to take their minds off the invaders and someplace to go to.”

Despie explained: “We’d build an American Disneyland because the Russian people would like something fresher than their own environment. Because Disneyland is not political, it’s designed and built to make people forget their troubles. The only concession to Russian culture is we might change the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ ride to the ‘Prisoners of Siberia.’ ”

IMPORTS/EXPORTS

It won’t be a “cultural one-way street, of peanut butter sandwiches and Bruce Springsteen,” noted Herbert Ellison, former head of the prestigious Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington.

Ellison, who now teaches Russian history at the University of Washington in Seattle, said that Russians may not have hot water, but they possess unlimited creativity that could be sparked by democracy.

Only one out of three Soviet citizens have hot water at present, he explained, but with the “new American regime,” Soviets could experience an “unprecedented economic growth because Americans would privatize a large part of the economy, eliminating the constraints of the clumsy, centralist, economic order.”

Americans would open the Soviet borders to outside technology and capital investment, he said. “This new infusion from the outside, coupled with the Soviet Union’s fantastic national resources, could make this a decade of potentially enormous growth.”

But Ivan shouldn’t start counting his rubles, Ellison warned. “While dreaming up the scenario, we shouldn’t forget a centralized party with military-style discipline is a Russian tradition.” Ellison thinks it would be enormously difficult to change the U.S.S.R. into a “participatory society unless it would be done gradually, transforming existing economic and political structures from within.”

Americans would face a “decade of headaches,” Ellison warns. After 10 years, the occupation could have made only “modest measures to privatize agriculture, small manufacturing, trade and services.”

He added, “Americans would leave industry and communications under state control because of the complexity of the existing system.”

Political parties ranging from “leftist-socialist to conservative with strong centrist opinion,” would only begin to develop. “And the Communist Party,” said Ellison, “would not be very strong.”

MIKHAIL, COME HOME

Solzhenitsyn, Baryshnikov, Orlov boarding planes for Moscow? A return of the brain drain of Soviet scientists, artists and human rights activists would be essential, according to San Francisco State political science professor Philip Siegelman, a member of the executive committee of Scientists for Sharansky, Orlov and Sakharov (SOS).

“The concept of Americans occupying the U.S.S.R. is mind-boggling,” said Siegelman. “It would be difficult to govern such a vast and complex country without the aid of Russian cadres who understand American political and economic institutions and could help bridge the culture-gap, and there aren’t enough.”

He suggested that such an occupation would encourage a voluntary “reverse immigration of emigres with advanced degrees and strong ties to the culture--leading dissidents, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews, Armenians--who could help their countrymen develop an open society.”

NIELSENS UNITE!

Comedienne Whoopi Goldberg speculated: “The big TV shows might well be ‘Plow of Fortune,’ ‘Revolution, She Wrote,’ ‘Scarecrow and Mrs. Empress,’ ‘Mike Hammer and Sickle,’ ‘Remington Wheat,’ ‘Minsk Vice’ and ‘Gorbachev & Lacey.’ ”

RUSSIA ROCKS

It’s hard enough to figure out which rock stars can sell-out tours in America. But who would be a big concert favorite in the Soviet Union?

If L.A.-based promoter Brian Murphy, who runs Avalon Attractions, was booking the tours, he’d start with David Bowie: “I think he’d create total havoc in Russia. They’re never really seen anything like him. My guess is that his appeal is international--it crosses all boundaries.”

Murphy suspects that Madonna would be a huge hit, too, but a more intriguing reason: “She’d be a scream, particularly because they’ve lived in such a cultural time-warp over there. My guess is they’ve never really seen a lot of Marilyn Monroe. And then--wham!--here comes Madonna. It would be as if Marilyn had never died.”

Pop personalities would fare the best: “For example, I think David Lee Roth would do better than Van Halen, if only because I think stage presence will cross over better than just musicianship. I mean, Roth’s album that he recorded in Spanish was almost better than the one he did in English.”

According to Murphy, sexuality would translate just as well as personality. “I think someone like Sheila E. would do great in Russia. They might not be listening to the music, but they’d sure be watching the stage.”

DRESSING FOR DEMOCRACY

Soviet women wouldn’t find Holly Harp creations on the rack, but the L.A. fashion designer says she’d sell from a trunk. She imagines taking a “trunk” of her clothing to Moscow stores the way she does to shops around the U.S. “I don’t know what kind of stores they have there, but a group of women could come and see a collection of my clothing.

Describing Russians as a “passionate and soulful group of people,” Harp says she’d love to see the response to her clothes, which are “modern, unconstructed and poetic.

“There’s something about the Russian spirit that is colorful and zesty and creative and I’d love to see the results of that chemistry.”

Harp figures her trunk shows would catch on with Soviet socialites like Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The hostess would invite 30 or 40 other women to her country home “as a special treat” and would love “playing dress-up. (It would be) relaxed and homelike, and women would talk about occasions they are dressing for.

“For an American to go into Russia with all those dainty things, instead of weapons or what have you would be a very meaningful exchange.”

Harp philosophizes that peace in the world will start with artists and women. “Any time an experience is brought down to the human example, you send out a ripple of good will. Everybody responds to beauty, including Communists.”

YOU’RE STILL FUNNY, CHARLIE BROWN

If Soviet papers like Pravda were to add comics pages in this curious event of an American takeover, the results probably would strongly resemble their U.S. comrades.

Said Charles Schulz, who made the “Peanuts” gang an American institution, “Outside of a few distinctly American pastimes, like my Charlie Brown baseball strips, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover how universal humor--and problems--are, and they remain the bases of comic strip strip art.”

He went on: “If I knew my work would appear in Russia, I’d draw the same things I draw now, and I think they’d understand. The same things make people laugh and suffer all over the world: They suffer from loneliness and laugh at somebody getting hit over the head with something.”

Bill Watterson, whose vividly drawn “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip about the exploits of terror tot Calvin and his pet stuffed tiger Hobbes is rapidly becoming one of the most popular strips in the country, agreed that Russian cartoons would be similar to American ones, but for less sanguine reasons:

“The capitalism we’d export would combine with the lures of Western decadence,” he said with a characteristic laugh. “The new Soviet cartoonists would adopt bourgeois values, hire assistants to do their strips and produce the same sort of garbage we get here.

“My first thought was that after all those years of censorship, all the leftists would suddenly get an opportunity to vent their spleen and we’d get a bunch of new ‘Doonesburys.’ The other view is sort of grim, but more realistic about what we’d probably get.”

PARTY, PARTY

“We’d pretty much do it the same way we do it here,” said Jane Trimble, director of public relations for Tupperware, the house party people. “We’re in 36 countries now, but sometimes we send reps from one country to another to help get things going.

“There would be a language problem,” Trimble acknowledged. “We’d probably not offer our entire line in the Soviet Union; though they might need types of Tupperware that we don’t use in the U.S. For instance, in Japan we have an extra large rice container that isn’t practical for this country. You’d probably have Russian women going into Russian homes in the same party situation that we’ve used here.”

CULTURE SHOCK

An Americanized Russia is easy to conceive, maintains political scientist Misha Tsypikin, who emigrated from the U.S.S.R. nine years ago. “Just look at the thousands of Russian immigrants living in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn--teens in jeans and leather jackets, munching junk food, swaying to rock on their Walkmen.”

The “new” Soviet citizens will “happily embrace the materialistic,” says Tsypikin, a Soviet affairs specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington.

Without imperial adventures to bankroll, materialistic impulses should be more easily met, Tsypikin said. The Soviet Union would concentrate on business and commerce and “finally be able to grow enough grain to feed its citizens.”

“The Russian language--already loaded with American slang--will become more Americanized.” And that’s not the only dilution.

The Soviets will still be guzzling alcohol: “Nothing could cure that, but they’ll be mixing their pure alcohol with Coke.”

Tsypikin speculated that feminist-weary American males would find new soul mates in Russian women. “There will be lots of intermarriage--American men will adore the hard-working and obedient women, and Russian women will like American men, because they don’t drink as hard as the Russians and they help around the house.”

However, in the long run, the principals of self-government may not win over the Soviet Union. After a 10-year U.S. occupation, “the Communist Party might become popular again as the carrier of the nationalistic spirit.”

However, he adds, “in a decade there won’t be a U.S.S.R. anymore--it will return to its 17th-Century borders. The Baltic states--Georgia, Armenia and the Ukraine--would surely separate.”

A MIXED UP MEDIA

David Aikman, Time magazine’s State Department correspondent who covered the Chernobyl disaster last year, warns that “Sam Donaldson would be imported to explain the fine art of shouting rude questions at the Soviet president during Kremlin photo-opportunities”

And Jane Pauley? Aikman, who speaks fluent Russian, speculated, “She’d be hosting ‘Segodnya’ (“Today”), teaching matronly Soviet reporters how to interview workers in sub-zero temperatures at 7:15 a.m. about automobile factory aerobics, and why dried cabbage is good for varicose veins.”

Russian babushkas (grandmothers), said Aikman, “will have dispensed with their ubiquitous head scarfs in favor of Clairol blue-gray hair rinses.” And, he adds, “Russians--once notorious for their failure to pay attention to body odor--would become the world’s largest consumers of lemon, lime and musk deodorants.”

Aikman thinks a hot issue would be Moscow’s war against McDonald’s: “The municipality would be victorious in preventing the Golden Arches from being placed in what had been Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square.”

Siberia will boom, Big Business will bicker with labor unions and Sasha will learn to “Just Say No,” after 10 years of U.S. occupation, said Aikman.

“New towns and vast cities will have sprouted in Siberia, devoted to mining hidden minerals,” he went on. “And some of its more notorious gulags will have become sober reminders to tourists of Russia’s grimmer past.”

Aikman figures the Russians may be a bit bewildered by the American multi-party system. “Just imagine earnest politicos from South Chicago and Queens explaining the intricacies of caucusing to blank-faced bureaucrats who have never known any form of electoral choice.”

While the finer points of unionizing may be easy for the Russians to comprehend, Aikman said that the AFL/CIO would need to send over representatives to explain “genuine labor militancy and how to negotiate with bosses.”

U.S. corporate chiefs “would give seminars for Russian managers, gently explaining that firing workers is OK.”

AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Don’t look for Malcolm Toon, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union who is living in North Carolina in retirement, to be among American candidates to run the vanquished nation: “Governing the Soviet Union would be totally impossible. There would be a no more thankless task. The U.S.S.R. is a vast, complex country with an apathetic, corrupt, incompetent population.”

Toon doubts that Americans could transfer their way of life to a nation “without any democratic tradition. The average Ivan knows only a system of compulsion and terror, and little about the outside world.”

Who would run this new Soviet Union? “Only a handful of Americans speak Russian. We’d be forced to use Communist Party hacks, because only they have experience running industries.”

While Toon thinks that Soviet citizens would “welcome American consumer goods, especially after living under a military-based economy,” he cautioned, “they’d need more than McDonald’s and stereos. Selling them the whole alien notion of freedom would certainly take longer to digest than a Big Mac--and a decade would be like a drop in the bucket.”

THE SIDE IS OUT, BUT HOW OUT

Dodger pitcher Jerry Reuss predicted: “In Russia it would be difficult to tell the amateur athletes from the professionals, since they both get paid the same.

“And because of their strict government policy, the fans would have a hard time believing that they’d ever see the players again once they left the field.”

THE OCCUPATION: PT. II, THE DOWNSIDE

“A nightmare,” Sovietologist Robert Conquest responded when asked what life would be like in a post-invasion U.S.S.R.

“Americans would be welcomed at first. But within a year, when paradise doesn’t arrive, trouble will start,” said Conquest at the Hoover Institute, a think tank located at Stanford University.

The author of the chilling 1984 sociological prospectus “What to Do When the Russians Come” (panned in Izvestia, praised in the Wall Street Journal) was gloomy about the prospects of success for either country.

“Scattered ill feeling will grow and survivors of the old regime would try to make trouble, the economy will collapse,” he said. “Peasants aren’t used to having incentives, and the need for even more grain imports will grow.” Because of the enormous size of the Soviet Union, American occupiers will face “frightful problems and expense distributing goods.”

There will be no alternative politicians or experienced administrators, said Conquest, “Americans will have to recruit Communist Party members. Workers will strike just to see what it’s like.”

And economics won’t be the only problem: “The decade won’t be peaceful. American troops will have to stop different nationalities from fighting each other, trying to seize chunks of territory and start new republics.

“I wouldn’t want to be an American battalion in Siberia in winter,” he said.

“Americans are impatient. They’d want to produce a perfect democracy right away. And when they don’t, Americans would yell, ‘Bring the boys back home.’ ”

THE SOUND OF RUBLES

Our radio is full of noisy contests and hype . . . but how would these promotions go over in an American-occupied Soviet Union? “I think it might really work, especially if we made fun of the old regime’s repressive attitudes,” said radio consultant Jeff Pollack, whose Pollack Communications handles stations in the U.S., France and Australia. A few Pollack contests:

Dissident of the Day. Each morning at 7:10, the first caller to phone the station and turn in a supporter of the old regime would win 5,000 rubles.

A Stalin A to Z Weekend (patterned after the popular Beatles A to Z Weekend). Stations would play a song beginning with the same letter of the alphabet of the name of someone purged during the Stalin era.

Vacation Give-Aways. Win a honeymoon trip to Afghanistan.

Valentine’s Day promotion. The winners can call their detained lovers in Siberia.

American Invasion Anniversary Special. A heavy-metal concert celebrating the fireworks when U.S. troops first landed on Soviet soil.

“The biggest problem you’d have is that the Russians, after years of political restrictions, would probably be very passive listeners,” Pollack said. “But I bet if people knew they could win 5,000 rubles just by turning someone in, they’d pick up the phone.”

GOIN’ COUNTRY

Forget about Phil Collins, Prince, Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston. The big stars in a U.S.-occupied Soviet Union would be (surprise) Tammy Wynette, George Jones and Merle Haggard. “My guess is that the Russians would just go crazy over old-fashioned country music,” predicted record industry seer Joe Smith, chief executive officer of Capitol-EMI record operations.

“The Russians are very sentimental, they love melodies and they drink a lot, which in my book would make them huge country fans. There’s something very Slavic about country music, which is full of angst and features lots of tales of tragedy and woe.”

Pop music might even have a bigger impact than TV or film: “Any time there’s a major change in a society, like there would be in Russia, you’ll see popular music have a big impact. When America was in tumult in the ‘60s, at the height of the civil rights movement and the anti-war protests, pop music was in the forefront of all the sociological change.

“And I think pop music, with its irreverence, its attacks on institutions and its universal language, would have a radical, transforming effect on Soviet society.”

STALIN’S GREATEST HITS?

“Do Russians do the polka? Whatever their native dances are, we’d package them.” The packager would be Mickey Elfenbein, executive vice president of K-tel International, based in Minnetonka, Minn. It’s famed for its compilation record albums and cassettes that are marketed via late-night blitzkrieg TV spots.

So . . . “if TV advertising time was available (in American-occupied Russia), we’d certainly use it,” said Elfenbein. “We’d certainly do an album of the country’s national music. In fact, we actually did an album of Russian songs which sold very well in Finland--which borders Russia.”

K-tel also probably would do an album of “international rock music” featuring a dozen or so songs “performed in English, with a strong beat, that are at the top of the charts in the U.S. and in England.”

Such compilations “usually sell very well in foreign territories. Why would Russia be any different?”

For that matter, what Russian wouldn’t want to become the proud owner of K-tel’s best-known product, the Miracle Brush?

“I have to think it would do very well in Russia, where they wear so much heavy, rough clothing.”

For the record: Elfenbein acknowledged that he had been slow in returning this Calendar inquiry because, “after I got your message from my secretary, I thought it was a crank call. . . . At K-tel, we get asked a lot of strange things. But this is the strangest.”

Oh--K-tel founder-president-chairman Philip Kives wasn’t around for an interview: “He’s in Canada. He didn’t want to be around when Russia invaded America,” noted Elfenbein.

NOT-QUITE-READY-FOR- PRIME TIME IN PRUSSIA

New TV shows and first-run American movies in a U.S.-dominated U.S.S.R.? Forget it, says TV producer/director Larry Schiller. He created the $29-million NBC miniseries “Peter the Great,” starring Maximilian Schell, which was shot in the Soviet Union. (Schiller eventually was ousted as director after seven weeks of filming over budget disputes.)

“I don’t know whether the bureaucracy would allow that; the country is built on bureaucracy,” he said. “No matter what the U.S. might want to change, I’d have to wonder how long and how far they would go before the bureaucrats would stop them.”

Schiller suggested that there might not be much programming from the West that the Russian people might care for anyway. “First of all, they already have a higher quality of television. Plus, they have a strong sense of self-preservation; it’s kept their country intact since the 9th Century without outside involvement.”

What kind of shows might Schiller send over? “I’d send a film about an American in Vietnam,” he said, explaining, “ ‘Platoon,’ if it were shown over there, would go over very well--it has to do with self-preservation.”

He might also send over the project he is working on at present. Schiller has been invited by Soviet director Nikita Mikhalkov (“Slave of Love”) to produce MGM’s English-language version of “Anna Karenina,” which will star Meryl Streep and starts production at the end of the year.

TO RUSSIA . . . WITH REVENGE

So we proposed this premise: How would the Russians take to a TV miniseries with the converse plot of “Amerika,” that America takes over Russia?

“There’s no question that a film depicting an American takeover of the Soviet Union would have a stronger impact there,” said Larry Caldwell, an Occidental College professor of political science specializing in the study of the Soviet Union.

“The Soviets are very patriotic,” said Caldwell, who also is a staff member at Rand Corp. Showing such a miniseries in “the Soviet Union today is like showing ‘Amerika’ here in 1944, during the war.”

And, so far, Russians don’t indulge in the “ macho nationalism or jingoism” as seen in “Amerika” or the “Rambo breed” of popular movies. “The Soviets have been very gentle about that kind of propaganda,” Caldwell said. “Yet I think their country is more prepared than this one, if we were to engage in a full-scale propaganda war of this sort.”

THE BIG PICTURE

The 10th anniversary of the U.S. takeover of the Soviet Union would undoubtedly be commemorated in the American way--by issuing a press release.

John L. Paluszek, president of the public affairs division of New York-based Ketchum Public Relations (which has consulted for countries like Jamaica, but for economic development and tourism, not political flakking), paused but a beat while deciding who he would use as President before fantasizing the following:

Marking the 10th anniversary of the joining of the Soviet Union to the United States, President Joseph Kennedy proclaimed that vast progress has been made in melding the Soviet culture with the American political and economic system, but that significant pockets of challenge remain.

He pointed to the ethnic diversity of the Soviet Union as one of the more difficult obstacles to total absorption of the American system. However, he said, the rapid advance of communications technology which enables me to speak today to Americans and to people as far apart as Moscow and Afghanistan encourages me to believe that we will soon overcome this obstacle as well.

Paluszek might also come in handy after an American takeover. He even designed a press release for the initial coup:

Effective midnight today, the Soviet Union has become a protectorate of the United States and is embarking on a historical new course of encouraging a free and open society. The U.S. has named Zbigniew Brzezinski Lord High Commissioner to oversee the immediate, albeit long-term, transition that is expected to take place throughout the Soviet Union.

President Mario Cuomo said that he was elated with the prospect not only of the Soviet Union but all of Eastern Europe undertaking this vast transformation. “I see in this the possibility, at long last, for world peace.”