The Quotable Communist : Gennady Gerasimov Brings His Pre-Summit Road Show to Town--Is Carson Worried?

H eeeeeeeeeeeere’s Gennady!

Live and in person and peering out the window of an Amtrak car rumbling from San Diego to Los Angeles, the chief of information for the Soviet Foreign Ministry is musing about the brouhaha over Larry Speakes, his one-time counterpart as superpower mouthpiece.

“Yes, I was surprised that he revealed he had made up quotes for President Reagan, and I feel sorry for him because he lost his job of $300,000,” Gerasimov explains. “I don’t think he can make it up with the book, huh?”

Could something similar happen in the Soviet Union?

“No,” the communist spokesman replies with Las Vegas-like timing. “I can never get a job of $300,000 a year in the Soviet Union.”

The Gennady Gerasimov Pre-Summit Show is off and running in Southern California, the latest leg of his 10-city, 16-day unofficial United States tour. For the next 12 hours, this most visible and quotable Soviet--a fixture on American television thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost , or openness--will play to the press and to an intimate and appreciative audience of VIPs on the 50th floor of the Bank of America tower in downtown Los Angeles.

Boffo Box Office

True, Variety won’t print a review. But no one knows better than Gerasimov that his blend of wiliness and wisecracks is boffo box office in person as well as on “Nightline,” his more usual forum.

The reason is as obvious as it is simple: He doesn’t fit most Americans’ image of the typical Soviet spokesman. Instead of a stiff, stuffy bureaucrat forever frightened of incurring the wrath of his Kremlin superiors, Gerasimov comes across as something of a free spirit.

“You know,” he says, leaning back in his train seat and sipping a Perrier with lime, “I don’t worry about what I say. If I worry about this, then I’m not fit for the job. I will have tension. And then, if you have tension,” he notes, arching one eyebrow, “you must have a massage daily.

“I cannot afford massage daily to fight my tension. So I don’t worry.”

Of course he is a committed communist with ambassadorial rank who delivers the official word on Soviet policy with party-line perfection. Yet he openly enjoys his creature comforts and talks about the good life as obsessively as any American yuppie.

Driving on Highway Rates High

What does he like best about traveling in the United States? “Driving a car on the highway,” he responds instantly.

But surely he can do that in his country.

“Yes, but I don’t have Mercury Marquis there. I liked the one I rented in New York.”

From his classic Burberry trench coat to his new glove-leather luggage to his tailored gray-pinstripe suit, he looks more at home on Madison Avenue than on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. In fact, reaching for lobster medallions and ice-cold Stolichnaya, Gerasimov is difficult to distinguish from the Southern California capitalists attending a Tuesday reception in his honor co-sponsored by The Trusteeship and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

“We’ve seen you on TV and you’re spectacular ,” gushes Ken Docter, regional vice chairman of the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse. Gerasimov smiles.

“You’re a friendly person, and that makes things easier ,” adds Leonard Strauss, chairman and CEO of Thrifty drugstores.

Gerasimov smiles more broadly. “Friendly? Hmmm,” he says later. “Gorky said that if an enemy doesn’t surrender, he must be liquidated. But Martin Luther King--or somebody--said, ‘We must turn enemies into friends.’ ”

In this convivial setting, it’s easy to forget that Gerasimov is nice only when and where he wants to be. Playing Moscow’s point man during the ruckus over U.S. journalist Nick Daniloff’s arrest in 1986, he was as gruff and aggressive as he was cheerful and charming during the three Reagan-Gorbachev summits that followed.

Gerasimov makes this perfectly clear at the outset of an interview. “I have no personality of my own. I simply reflect the personality of people around me,” he says. “If they have good personalities, I’m good. And if they’re bad, I am terrible.”

He is the first to admit that he has become the personification of Soviet policy to most Americans since his appointment in 1986. “Am I a good personification? I don’t know. I must be. Do I come through loud and clear? I want to come through loud and clear.”

In fact, he complains that Western journalists, who just a few years ago groused that they had no reliable source of official information in the secretive Soviet society, are getting spoiled by having him and other officials at their disposal.

“Now American correspondents in Moscow are grumbling that we have too many briefings, too many press conferences and too many sensational articles in our press for them to read,” he says, looking pleased with himself. “So there’s a big change.”

So much so that he had to cancel a scheduled Wednesday appearance before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council to take the red-eye to Washington, where he joined a Soviet delegation meeting with U.S. Information Agency and news media representatives to discuss ways to improve communication between the two countries.

On the subject of U.S. officials, Gerasimov remembers ex-White House spokesman Speakes most fondly.

“He was so kind to me. He gave me a portfolio,” he says, smiling at the memory. “I thought it was real leather. But it was not real leather. But it had the presidential seal on it. I used it to carry around my papers for a while. Then one of your correspondents saw it, and I changed it.”

Has he ever made up quotes for his boss, as Speakes acknowledged doing for Reagan on two occasions?

“No. Why should we?” Gerasimov says, seemingly offended. “But, really I was not surprised by it (the Speakes affair) because your politicians sometimes read from TelePrompTers. I mean, you look around and they appear to be saying all that stuff very impressively. And then you realize it’s because of the TelePrompTer.”

Gerasimov, a career journalist and former editor of Moscow News, is happy to credit Marlin Fitzwater, Speakes’ replacement at the White House, as “the man who helped me to gain prominence on American TV.” But he’s still irritated by Fitzwater’s comment that the December summit in Washington would be “the meeting of the enemies.”

“This expression irritated, annoyed and angered Gorbachev very much,” Gerasimov notes. “But I was brave enough to interrupt Gorbachev and mention that Fitzwater on second thought was sorry. He was wrong. He didn’t mean it. . . . He’s a very good man, and we are on very good terms.”

On the subject of his boss, Gerasimov claims that “if Gorbachev were not here, he would have been invented. The times for this kind of leader have come.”

But the spokesman--who is the same age as Gorbachev, 57--candidly admits that for decades, “our generation in general waited in the wings for too long. But now that we’ve come, we are in a little bit of a hurry to change our society for the better.”

He sums up the current state of U.S.-Soviet relations by saying that things are so good right now “President Reagan can even agree to buy a used car from Mr. Gorbachev. So I mean that trust is being developed.”

He predicts that President Reagan will be “assured a good welcome” in Moscow in May, even if a new arms treaty is not achieved in time for the summit. “It is not a tragedy,” the Soviet spokesman maintains. “We have our regrets, but we don’t want to lose momentum in the Soviet-American political dialogue. In this sense we want continuity.”

And he adds: “Also after your election in November.”

Ah, November. “Where’s the beef?” says the Soviet, rolling his eyes.

True to form, Gerasimov refuses to be drawn into any detailed discussion about the current crop of presidential candidates, even though he says that the question he has been asked most often around the country is: “Whom would you like to see in the White House?”

“I have no answer to this question,” he states emphatically. “For instance, in San Diego, they asked me this question, but differently. ‘Whose wife would you like to see in the White House entertaining Mrs. Gorbachev?’ ”

Gerasimov responded: “I’m sure that Raisa Gorbachev will give appropriate treatment to the First Lady.”

‘Personality Contest’

The Soviet spokesman says it’s not so much a matter of whether it’s appropriate for him to comment. “It’s just your campaign is very far away and little understood because it’s a personality contest. I covered Ronald Reagan in 1976 with a group of foreign correspondents following his campaign trail through the snows of New Hampshire.”

Gerasimov assumes a smug look.

“Then he lost to Ford, who in his turn lost to Carter, who in his turn lost to Reagan, who only four years ago lost to Ford, who lost even to Carter.”

He takes a breath. “So why should we worry about your election campaign when we can’t explain it?”

Of the leading candidates, Gerasimov has met Michael Dukakis and George Bush, but not Jesse Jackson. Does he think a black could become President?

“Well, it depends on the attitudes of your people,” he says warily. “If you follow your own Declaration (of Independence) that all men are created equal”--he interrupts to quote from the document--”and same right to pursue the White House, then yes. But I know what the people are saying, ‘We are not ready yet.’ But it’s very interesting that Jackson is popular.”

Bit of a Showoff

For the most part, Gerasimov isn’t shy about revealing his knowledge of American society. If anything, he’s a bit of a showoff. He boasts that his 9-year-old daughter likes Donald Duck better than Mickey Mouse, and he worries about the shirt he had to buy when Eastern Airlines lost his luggage for two days.

“I’m not sure if this collar is trendy,” he says.

As a Novosti press agency correspondent based in New York from 1972 to 1978, he once drove “from sea to shining sea” across the United States, winding up at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway.

He confesses that even now he dreams of living in Southern California some day. “I would like to move here, if not for Moscow. I am not allowed. I like the weather. And the people, too. California is a style of life.”

Would he settle in Malibu with the other celebrities of his caliber?

“Malibu?” he ponders. “Hmmm. How much does it cost?”