Kremlin Stepping Up Its Criticism of Reagan

Just a month before the scheduled start of the summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet Union is stepping up a campaign of strident criticism of the U.S. Administration.

The latest attack appeared Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, which accused Reagan of “imperial arrogance” for the way he has lectured the Soviet Union.

The campaign began last week when Gorbachev himself complained to visiting Secretary of State George P. Shultz about two recent Reagan speeches.

Reagan, who is due to start summit talks with Gorbachev here May 29, spoke of a “wall of oppression” in the Soviet Union and called on Gorbachev to dismantle limits on the press and free speech.

Western diplomats have played down the importance of the attacks, saying that the Soviets periodically go through a toughening of rhetoric before a superpower summit meeting.

“They may worry a little bit if there are suggestions they are acting out of weakness,” a senior Western diplomat said. “It’s a delicate thing. They have been responding to American policy, and it’s still a difficult thing to have that said publicly.”

But diplomats said the new assertiveness in the Soviet statements may also reflect the realization that a major arms treaty will not be ready for signing at the end of May, meaning that there is relatively little to lose by seeking a propaganda advantage.

A statement issued Thursday by the ruling Politburo said that Soviet leaders are prepared to make the necessary efforts to achieve concrete results at the summit.

“Of course, this also requires a reciprocal striving from the American side,” the statement said, according to Tass, the official news agency. It added that the United States should “give up attempts to impose its views and values on others.”

The Pravda article Friday used similar language.

“Washington’s policy of confrontation and interference in our internal affairs adds fuel to the fire of ideological bitterness and has a negative impact on Soviet-American dialogue,” Pravda said.

The article complained that the Americans are once again “preaching at us” about human rights and asserted that the United States has human rights abuses of its own. Among them it mentioned the homeless, the unemployed and the number of men on Death Row in various states in the United States who are under 18 years of age.

Pravda asserted that foreign critics are now attacking the Soviet Union’s socialist system because Gorbachev’s policy of openness has made it harder to criticize Moscow on humanitarian grounds.

An apparent struggle is taking place over ideology in the Kremlin, but diplomats said that it is unclear what role, if any, that conflict may be playing in the new, tougher rhetorical stance toward the Reagan Administration.