THE WASHINGTON SUMMIT : Enigmatic Gorbachev Taxes Kremlinologists’ Skills

Last summer, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev welcomed a group of former U.S. foreign policy officials to Moscow by asking what was going on in Washington.

“I read what your Soviet experts say about events in Moscow, and they are so wrong that I suspect my own experts are equally wrong in analyzing events in Washington,” he explained disarmingly.

Whatever the state of Washington-watching in Moscow, it has been 20 years and more since a Soviet leader appeared as enigmatic and seemingly contradictory as Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is for American analysts who ponder the Kremlin’s convoluted ways.

Con Artist or Trickster?

Is the man who arrives here today for the summit a con artist and trickster, as some U.S. experts believe, the kind of wily adversary who attempted to mousetrap an unsuspecting President Reagan at Reykjavik? Or is he a sincere visionary bent on reforming the Soviet system and reducing tensions between the superpowers?

Is he “impetuous to the point of recklessness,” as one U.S. Kremlinologist says? Or a calculating bully who tries to browbeat American negotiators by craftily losing his temper “at least once every session,” as a participant in previous summits is convinced?

There is evidence to support each of these assessments, but the answer to the riddle of Gorbachev may be that all are correct.

While the science of Kremlinology is uncertain at best, the available evidence--taken all together--suggests Gorbachev may be that recurrent figure in Russian history: a wily but impatient leader of towering self-confidence who is determined to adapt Western concepts of innovation and efficiency to a system inured to stolid obedience by decades and centuries of authoritarian rule.

“There is a vision there,” one veteran government analyst said. “He’s particularly got to change the way the economy works but it’s broader than that. . . . He is willing to entertain policy changes that would roll back, I think, if he could do them, a good bit of the Stalinist creation that came in the late 1920s and 1930s.

“In that sense, he harkens back to Lenin and to the mid-1920s when the system was somewhat more open than it is now, still run by the Communist Party, but somewhat different than what you’ve got after the 1930s,” he said.

‘Limited to the Bold Stroke’

In pursuit of sweeping change, this analyst said, “Gorbachev is inclined to the bold stroke, impatient for results, refusing to let an issue vegetate. . . . He’s tactically flexible. He will compromise. He will settle for what he can get for the moment, but the battle keeps going on and he keeps working for his agenda.”

With his readiness to trade immediate concessions for long-term gains toward his goals, specialists say, Gorbachev may offer Reagan and the U.S. summit team unusual opportunities.

Once he decided he wanted a medium-range missile treaty, for example, as a stepping stone toward reducing the burden of military spending on the Soviet economy, he accepted a truly unprecedented on-site verification package that no Westerner could have imagined would be acceptable to a Soviet leader.

“He’s very smart, requires almost no aids like three-by-five cards, and he’s extremely self confident. . . . I think he views himself as better than most people he deals with.”

Unusual Risks, Uncertainties for U.S.

But Gorbachev presents unusual risks and uncertainties for the United States as well. Unconventional and thus unpredictable, his self-confidence and impetuosity sometime lead the Soviet leader to spring surprises or adopt extreme positions he did not intend to take. Either tendency could bring the summit down in ruins, with potentially dangerous consequences for relations between the nuclear superpowers.

Moreover, the task of negotiating with Gorbachev for long-term changes in U.S.-Soviet relations is complicated by the fact that many analysts believe his drive for radical changes inside the Soviet system has bred such formidable resistance that he may soon have to choose between abandoning his goals and giving up power.

Lt. Gen. William Odom, a veteran Sovietologist who is now head of the super-secret National Security Agency, recently told a meeting of Soviet specialists that the “essential paradox Gorbachev faces” probably contains the seeds of his demise.

“He needs great centralized power to carry through reform,” Odom said. “Yet if the reform leads to decentralization, he will lose the very power he needs to carry it through. This is surely not lost on Gorbachev’s critics.”

Among former Soviet leaders, Gorbachev most resembles Nikita S. Khrushchev, according to most analysts. But Khrushchev, while considered a reformer because he repudiated the brutal terrorism of Stalin, is also remembered for pounding his shoe on the table during a U.N. meeting and for bringing the world to its closest approach to nuclear war with the Cuban missile crisis.

No one expects the urbane Gorbachev to act boorish or engage in nuclear adventurism. None of the experts is predicting shocks at the summit, either, for, as one Soviet analyst said, the Soviet leader has compelling reasons of his own to want the summit to “look successful.”

‘Potential for Surprises’

But as a senior Administration official said, “We are acutely aware of the potential for surprises from Gorbachev,” ranging from offers to cut Soviet conventional forces in Europe to setting withdrawal dates for Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

Some experts believe Gorbachev tried to mousetrap President Reagan at the Reykjavik summit, which broke up in disarray over Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based anti-missile defense system still in the research stage. Gorbachev first tempted Reagan by appearing willing to consider elimination of all nuclear weapons, U.S. officials say, then tried to force concessions on SDI as the price of agreement.

As the President himself described it in a television interview last week, “at the very last minute” Gorbachev said the arms agreement “could only take place if we gave up SDI, and that’s when I came home.”

Specialists contend that Gorbachev tried to apply similar pressure tactics in October, when Secretary of State George P. Shultz, visiting Moscow, told Gorbachev that the President would not compromise on SDI. Gorbachev responded that he was “not comfortable” coming to Washington for the summit under those circumstances.

Experts Are Divided

After Shultz left, the Soviet leader did a flip-flop and ordered Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to Washington within days, hat in hand, to put the summit back on track.

Kremlinologists are split on explaining this dramatic and almost humiliating reversal. Those who deal primarily in internal Soviet politics note that Gorbachev’s meeting with Shultz came just one day after Moscow party boss Boris Yeltsin’s startlingly outspoken attack on the pace of Gorbachev’s reforms. Yeltsin’s action created tumult within the Communist Party Central Committee and forced the Soviet leader to postpone his commitment to a summit date until the political dust had settled, these analysts say.

Other experts, mainly those who specialize in U.S.-Soviet relations, believe Gorbachev was making one more stab at trying to squeeze Reagan on SDI in the belief that the President had been severely weakened by the Iran-Contra affair and the recent stock market crash.

There is a third possibility: that Gorbachev, as is his tendency, became carried away with his own rhetoric. A prodigious talker who sometimes bores even his aides, Gorbachev can get caught up in the momentum of a discussion, U.S. analysts say, and go too far.

Speculation on Survival

When he finds himself stymied, according to one government analyst, he sometimes tries to bulldoze his way to an immediate and dramatic victory rather than back off.

At present, Gorbachev clearly has political problems at home. His speeches have been more restrained since Yeltsin’s ouster but the incident revived speculation here about how long Gorbachev can survive.

Kremlin watchers have all but formed a betting pool on the general secretary’s tenure. The most specific prediction has come from Marshall Goldman of the Harvard Russian Research Center, who before the Yeltsin affair gave Gorbachev three to five years and who revised the prognosis downward afterwards. Peter Reddaway of the Kennan Institution for Russian Studies here is similarly pessimistic.

Some believe the crunch will come at or before a key Communist Party Conference next June or July, when Gorbachev will try to change radically the majority in the powerful Central Committee, where his chief opposition lies. Two-thirds of its approximately 300 members were appointed by previous leaders, and 40% of them are deadwood who have already lost their positions under Gorbachev. Now, in effect, he wants them to vote themselves off the Central Committee as well.

CIA Expert’s View

“The danger is that a minority in the Politburo who oppose him will combine with the majority in the Central Committee who oppose him to overthrow him,” said Marc Zlotnik, the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief expert on Kremlin leadership.

Zlotnik and most other analysts, including Cornell Prof. Myron Rush, believe Gorbachev will survive the summer conference. But Rush predicts “a confrontation” between Gorbachev and his chief Politburo opponent, Yegor K. Ligachev, the No. 2 man in the regime, “to decisively resolve” their differences before mid-1988. Echoing this, Archie Brown, a Soviet expert at Oxford University, believes the “critical period” for Gorbachev will be the months leading up to the conference.

If Gorbachev falls, he is likely to be replaced by a more conservative leader whose policies at home would be more repressive and whose foreign policies might lead to greater tension in the world.

Some U.S. liberals want to help Gorbachev, whether with a more accommodating position on arms control or with trade and economic concessions, but such sentiment is greeted by strong opposition from a variety of quarters.

No Don Quixote

“It is not up to us to help him solve his problems,” former Defense Secretary Harold Brown said. “Not only don’t we know enough about doing it, but he’s not out to do us any favors. He’s out to improve the Soviet Union”--and his improvements, Brown warned, could turn the Soviets into an even more formidable competitor for the United States.

A strong minority believes Gorbachev will be able to retain power without any outside help. He has shown that he is no Don Quixote, these analysts say, and he even remembers to be cautious on the matters that his countrymen particularly care about.

One small but telling example:

Despite Marxist rhetoric about equality, the idea that women should occupy a secondary role remains pervasive in Soviet society, not least among party officials, so whenever Gorbachev is seen off at the Moscow airport by members of the Politburo, Raisa Gorbachev unobtrusively boards the plane by the rear entrance while he waves at the front door.

When the plane arrives in foreign capitals, however, the attractive and stylish Mrs. Gorbachev deplanes down the front stairs at her husband’s side.

Television Interview

Similarly, Gorbachev’s U.S. television interview last week was printed in its entirety in Moscow--except for a segment that suggested he discussed state secrets with his wife. The very thought of such a thing, U.S. experts say, would have been unacceptable to his Kremlin colleagues.

Tactically, too, Gorbachev has never publicly criticized the Soviet KGB secret police. And he has resisted what must be a strong temptation to increase food supplies for the populace by allowing private middlemen to buy at the farms and deliver to the cities.

Beyond such tactics, Gorbachev is credited with being an astute, even cunning politician. Without the Stalin-era instruments of terror to dominate the Politburo and run the Soviet Union, he must bring his colleagues and the broad masses along with him through political persuasion.