TV REVIEW : CBS NEWSMEN REPORT ON SOVIET UNION IN SPECIAL

The days when the Soviet Union was safe from media overkill are over. Will Muscovites miss the tight embrace of absolute government control--when corruption was a carefully guarded secret, when avalanches and floods made news overseas, but not at home. Who knows? But thanks to glasnost --the government’s new policy of openness--Soviet citizens are hearing more about the flaws in their system than ever before.

It was inevitable that this spirit of glasnost would eventually apply to the Western media as well. It’s spawned “The Soviet Union--Seven Days in May,” a two-hour CBS News special that airs tonight (9-11 p.m., Channels 2 and 8).

The result is probably more a triumph of access than analysis, but it does offer an intriguing glimpse of the everyday workings of Soviet society. With Dan Rather and most of CBS’ heavy hitters on hand, we see Russian shoppers complaining about lousy food (“You consider this meat?” one says at the market. “It’s all skin and bones!”), hear a local rock star’s assessment of glasnost (“they want to cash in”) and receive a shrewd lesson in underground economics from a black-market dealer. Asked if he could deliver a Mercedes, he coolly replies, “I only need to know how you are going to pay for it--with gold, drugs, diamonds-- we can take anything you want.” (Maybe someday this guy will get a shot at an American Express commercial.)

CBS certainly scores some coups. We see a criminal trial in Moscow and a drug bust in Soviet Georgia. Leslie Stahl even goes where no Russian man has ever gone, witnessing the birth of a baby in a hospital delivery room where husbands are banned. (The attending physician jokes--as no Soviet doctor has probably ever joked before--”If you were Soviet TV, we’d kick your butts out.”)

Some segments have a wry comic kick, especially correspondent Ed Bradley’s visit with top Soviet spokesman Genadi Gerasimov, who when asked if the Russians have bugged the new U.S. Embassy, says with a wink, “Maybe.” Unfortunately, this power-pack journalism often gets out of hand. Several Rather segments rely too heavily on the cult of personality--Rather’s that is, especially his chummy interview with a crusading magazine editor which gives more screen time to Rather (looking especially rugged in a jean jacket) than his subject.

Still, “Seven Days” does a solid job of depicting the tensions that accompany sudden change--even change designed to preserve as much as reform. It’s at its best when the news teams abandon such snoozy fare as the Soviet court system and show us a skirmish between working-class body builders and a flock of free-spirited young rockers who’ve outraged the muscle boys with their embrace of decadent Western ways.

The most fascinating sequence shows a clump of Russian school children who rattle off the ills they’ve heard about America (crime and racial strife), but still remain fascinated by this almost-mythical land of pop starlets and blue jeans.

That’s the most tantalizing question surrounding glasnost-- what will this erotic rush of freedom do to such a closed society? Will it strengthen or topple it? It’s a query Rather addresses with grandiose rhetoric (“when a superpower stirs, the world holds its breath”), but “Seven Days in May” never really uncovers an adequate answer.