Members of Soviet Team Privately Concede Disappointment With Talks

The Soviet summit delegation, which arrived in Washington on Monday expressing hope and excitement, departed Thursday talking publicly about progress toward reducing long-range nuclear missiles but privately exuding disappointment.

“The fire of enthusiasm has been dampened, “ Georgy A. Arbatov, a top Soviet adviser, said in an interview. His drawn face betraying a lack of enthusiasm for what he was about to say, Arbatov added that the summit’s outcome was “in the realm of what could have been expected--not a treaty (on long-range missiles), but some movement forward.”

Arbatov’s words echoed those of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who insisted in his departure statement at the White House that “the visit to Washington has, on the whole, justified our hopes.” But he cited only one specific: the signing of the treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles, an agreement reached before he set foot on American soil.

When they arrived Monday, the Soviets toasted each other with Scotch and vodka in their elegant rooms at the Madison Hotel, where they could watch Moscow television beamed to them via satellite.

Arbatov, director of the Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, suggested then that Gorbachev and President Reagan could agree on fairly firm guidelines for the negotiators in Geneva who are seeking to flesh out the leaders’ goal--enunciated at last year’s summit in Reykjavik, Iceland--of slashing in half long-range missile arsenals.

‘Many Empty Brackets’

“There is a treaty now on the table in Geneva, but it has many empty brackets in it,” Col. Gen. Nikolai F. Chervov, head of the Soviet general staff’s arms control directorate, said Tuesday. He said the Soviets hoped that the two leaders could agree to another summit in Moscow next spring--and that a new arms reduction treaty would be ready for them to sign.

“The road to Moscow has been pointed,” said Nikolai V. Shishlin, deputy information chief for the Communist Party Central Committee, in a reference to the hoped-for summit next year, “but it has yet to be paved.”

For the Soviets, the week’s high point came Tuesday, when the two superpower leaders signed the medium-range missile treaty.

“Is this an isolated episode or the beginning of a real breakthrough in getting rid of nuclear weapons?” Arbatov wondered aloud after he returned from the White House treaty-signing ceremony.

“I am optimistic,” Roald Z. Sagdayev, director of the Institute of Space Research, replied. “We have made it very easy for your President to save face on ‘Star Wars.’ ”

He was referring to the Soviets’ shifting of emphasis from Reagan’s space-based Strategic Defense Initiative program--”Star Wars.”

Gorbachev had insisted during the Iceland summit that the United States, in essence, must abandon “Star Wars,” which is designed to neutralize the Soviets’ offensive missiles. Reagan balked, and the summit broke up in confusion.

But this year, in their public statements in Washington, the Soviets have dropped their earlier demands and insisted instead on what Sagdayev called “continued observance of the ABM Treaty.” In the Soviets’ view, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty prohibits testing of SDI components outside the laboratory. The Reagan Administration, however, maintains it is allowed to test SDI components in space, but not to deploy them.

“ ‘Star Wars’ has become a dogma which we help build up by constantly referring to it,” Arbatov said. “So it’s best to concentrate on what we already have in hand--a law, the ABM treaty, which will prevent destabilizing developments.”

He and other Soviet experts claimed they had also dropped their insistence on specifying the number of years during which the ABM treaty would be observed.

“We say it is a law,” Soviet physicist and Gorbachev adviser Yevgeney P. Velikhov, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, said. “And if you follow the law, we can have stability.”

Most Will Want Cuts

“Lets go for the 50% cut in strategic weapons,” Velikhov added. “Don’t test weapons in space for the period it takes to make these cuts, and by the end of the process, see what you want--more cuts or ‘Star Wars.’ By then, most people in the world will prefer more cuts.”

The Soviet officials said they felt that Reagan, left to his own devices, would have been more accommodating in the talks. In his one-on-one meetings with Gorbachev, they said, he would express support for compromise, only to harden his position after consulting with his aides. They blamed not Reagan’s own staff but what they called the moderate U.S. foreign policy Establishment, as personified by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former White House National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, both opponents of the medium-range missile treaty.

The hurried comings and goings of the Soviet aides gave the hotel’s 11th floor the air of an American election campaign office, but as the days passed, there was a growing sense that although their candidate was performing well, the votes were just not there.

There were no cheery toasts when the Soviets packed their bags on Thursday and climbed into their limousines for the ride to Andrews Air Force Base and their Aeroflot jetliner. They just walked out quietly through the rainy night.