Soviets Critical of Reagan’s Conciliatory Speech

The Soviet Union reacted with disdain Thursday to a conciliatory pre-summit speech by President Reagan, in which he praised the efforts of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to broaden human rights in the Soviet Union.

Commentators for the official news agency Tass argued that Reagan is hardly in a position to comment on civil liberties in any country. They cited what they said was a “large-scale onslaught” on civil liberties by his Administration, heightened surveillance of critics and an increased refusal to provide information on its actions.

Reporting on Reagan’s speech Wednesday in Chicago, the Tass commentators said he “has to admit” that the humanitarian ideals espoused by the United States have been significantly diminished by racism, unemployment, homelessness and other social problems.

Arms Scandal Cited

They said that events such as the arms scandal involving Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels made a mockery of any American assertion that “the government is the servant of the people and not the other way around.”

The comments, although largely in keeping with the standard Soviet response to Western criticism of the political system here, were notable for their failure to accept what the White House had apparently intended as a conciliatory gesture in advance of Reagan’s scheduled meeting with Gorbachev here at the end of May.

Reagan said that while he intends to raise human rights issues at the five-day meeting, he will not seek to confront Gorbachev on issues that are now even more sensitive at home than abroad.

“I give him the benefit of the doubt that, faced with the economic problems he has, glasnost , or political openness, he really is attempting to get that,” Reagan said in Chicago. “So I would hope that in our discussions that maybe we could be helpful to him in suggestions on how he might better bring that about.”

For Reagan, a veteran critic of the Soviet Union, the turnaround was remarkable. But the response here was skeptical, even cynical.

“When he is ‘Soviet-bashing,’ as they say, he seems to be speaking from his heart,” one Soviet official remarked. “In Chicago, he seemed to be reading his lines, lines someone else wrote for him.”