SOVIET CHIC : All Things Russian Are at the Summit of Popularity Thanks to Glasnost and Gorbachev

The same face that could launch a thousand Soviet missiles or smile over an arms control pact stares out of the mirror at Ron Knapp as he shaves every morning.

A little nail polish up top for the birthmark, and the Huntington Beach, Calif., real estate agent is a dead ringer for Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

“People are shocked. Believe me, they are shocked,” says Knapp, one of at least two Gorbachev look-alikes whose schedules are busy with film and public appearances these days. “(People) give me the big eye, and they take two steps back and they say, ‘Speak some Russian.’ They want a glossy picture with a hammer and sickle sitting on their desk, signed as Mikhail Gorbachev.”

The demand for Knapp and David Lloyd Austin (who impersonated the Soviet leader in “Rocky IV”), is only a small sign of what began before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow but now threatens to become a full-blown invasion: In Southern California, suddenly, all things Soviet are chic.

--”Surf Russia” T-shirts, featuring the face of V.I. Lenin next to palm trees, sold so fast that boutiques couldn’t keep them in stock.

--An “entertainment summit” of Soviet and American film makers became the hottest ticket in Hollywood, with members of the Soviet delegation dragged off night after night to attend the most exclusive dinner parties.

--Armand Hammer Productions worked out a deal with Home Box Office for a 10-hour television miniseries that is to follow one Russian family through the past 80 years. The project promptly became known as “Russian ‘Roots.’ ”

--Mattel International, a division of Mattel Inc., in Hawthorne, Calif., maker of Barbie dolls, started talks with the Soviets about a deal to manufacture dolls in the Soviet Union. “Barbie Doll Diplomacy” the effort is dubbed.

--In December, Gorbachev made the Gallup list of the 10 men most admired by Americans, the first Soviet leader to do so. He placed eighth -- just behind Ollie North, and tied with noted capitalist Lee Iacocca.

--U.S. tourism to the Soviet Union has more than doubled, with Los Angeles travel agents hard-pressed to find tour spaces.

Interest in the Soviet Union -- some of it serious, some not; some informed, some naive -- is skyrocketing, recalling the mood after Nixon went to China. Just as perceptions of the Chinese changed as a conservative Republican president moved from confrontation to consultation, public opinion polls show that the suspicion and hatred with which many viewed the Soviet Union has diminished, at least for now.

Fueling the fascination with Soviet life has been the drama of four summits in 2 1/2 years; progress on arms control after years of stasis; the figures cut by the energetic Gorbachev and his stylish wife, Raisa, during their visit here last December; increased openness under “ glasnost “; more Jewish and Armenian emigration; the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and the inherent suspense in Gorbachev’s ambitious attempt to modernize conservative Soviet society. Recriminations have been replaced by optimism about U.S.-Soviet relations -- and the desire to get in on something hot.

The changes in the image of the Soviet Union “have attracted the attention of people who under most circumstances wouldn’t give a damn,” says Michael Brainerd, president of the New York--based Citizen Exchange Council, the largest nationwide organization engaged in reciprocal U.S.--Soviet exchanges. “You have punk rockers interested in what the Soviets are listening to, and wearing letters of the Cyrillic alphabet on their clothes. I have never seen anything like it before.”

Nor has Soviet commentator Vladimir Pozner, who visited Los Angeles Los Angeles in March, 1987, for the so--called Entertainment Summit between Soviet and American film makers. Participants decried Cold War stereotypes in movies, talked about U.S.--Soviet relations, visited film studios, discussed mututal film projects--and partied night after night.

“We were virtually kidnaped and taken to people’s homes,” says Pozner, who is often a spokesman for the Soviet Union on “Nightline” and “Donahue.” “We definitely got this feeling that there was a change in people’s attitude and a more friendly feeling. There were the beginnings of a fad. Since then, that has developed.”

“It is cool to go to Russia now,” says Michael Elias, co-creator and co-executive producer with Rich Eustis of ABC’s successful “Head of the Class.” So cool, in fact, that next month Elias is scheduled to film two episodes of the successful prime-time sitcom in Moscow.

Americans are going to the Soviet Union as never before. The number of tourists reached a high of 93,000 in 1987, more than doubling 1986 figures, and now is headed for a record 113,00 to 115,000, according to Soviet statistics. The Soviets are feverishly building 26 new hotels in 18 cities to accommodate the influx.

“It has been crazy here,” reported Steve Musson, manager of the American Express office at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. “Everybody is going.”

One longtime customer, who had not been interested before, told Musson that glasnost was the reason for going this year, then booked Musson’s most extensive tour, a two-week trip through Moscow, Leningrad, Yerevan, Yalta and Kiev.

A number who go with political agendas -- like the peace marchers of last summer or 9-year-old Bradley Correa of El Segundo, Calif., who went on a self-styled “peace mission” in March -- see little other than what is programmed by Soviet officials.

But some American tourists are increasingly going beyond the planned attractions. Tracy Wright, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, took an 11-day trip to the Soviet Union during spring break, had a couple of free hours in Leningrad and immediately encountered the black market operators who try to trade with foreigners in major Soviet cities. She and her friends were invited to see the apartment of one of them. “Don’t speak,” he whispered as they went into his building. “I don’t want people to know you are here.”

“They knew about America,” Wright says. “They wanted to get to America. They told us this. But they said most people are happy with the way things are going. It made me sad they wanted to go. It would have made me happier to hear them say, ‘We love our country and we want to stay here.’ We felt so helpless.”

But when producer Elias went to Moscow earlier this year to scout locations for “Head of the Class,” he had a much different experience.

The Soviets brought him into a high school English class. “We start chatting with the students,” says Elias. “We ask who their favorite American author is. (It’s) Salinger, and their favorite book is ‘Catcher in the Rye.’ They are very challenging. They want to know how this show is going to portray Soviet students. Is this going to be another warmongering show? We explain what a sitcom is, which is somewhat difficult. It is not known in the Soviet Union. We said, ‘It is a novel, every week another chapter.’

“The teacher said, ‘Would you like to continue the conversation? Or show (the Americans) what you know? The kids said, ‘Keep it freewheeling.’ The teacher was fine: ‘Sure, (do) what you want to do.’

“We walked to our car. They seemed like just a bunch of kids, but our interpreters were in a state of shock. They both said 10 years ago when they were in this class, if an American delegation had come to the class, it would have been rehearsed: which kids were to speak, which topics to discuss, which not to discuss.”

Elias says the Americans had missed the significance of the unstructured discussion, “but the (Russian translators) sure got it. That was the clear signal that it is not going to be easy to go back on ‘ perestroika ‘ (the Soviet economic reform program) and glasnost : The kids have bought it.”

Not surprisingly, Southern California’s most active interchange with the Soviets concerns film.

Amid expressions of mutual regret for being part of an industry that fosters and perpetuates Cold War stereotypes, many top film makers of both countries now are trying to do business with one another.

“All the things I used to talk about with (Soviet) writers and poets and film people at nights over a bottle of vodka are now being accomplished,” says producer-director Stanley Kramer, who has long been friendly with Soviet film makers and writers. “It is more acceptable, more possible. (Soviet film makers) were a little afraid and sometimes extremely conservative and didn’t look ahead to the possibilities that the interchange would prevent warfare, strained relationships, everything. This is a chance to see that everyone wants the same thing.”

In February, Arnold Schwarzenegger began filming “Red Heat” in Moscow’s Red Square. And Robert Redford has worked out tentative deals with Soviet officials to give American independents wanting to film in the Soviet Union rates cheaper than those charged major studios for facilities and actors.

Soviet themes are so hot in the entertainment world that industrialist Armand Hammer is getting involved in features. Derek Hart, president of Armand Hammer Productions, confirms that the company is working on a “Russian ‘Roots’ ” project for HBO, which he described as “10 hours covering the entire Soviet history through the personal history of one family.” To film the project, which is being written in Los Angeles by emigre poet and writer Elena Muravina, the company has booked facilities to film the project at the Gorki film studio in Moscow for next year.

And the broader Los Angeles art scene, too, has a Soviet accent. The Eduard Nakhamkin gallery, featuring works by Soviet emigres, recently opened on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, catering to clients such as O.J. Simpson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kelly McGillis. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art plans to exhibit rare Islamic art from the Soviet Union next year. In San Diego, the city plans a 1990 arts festival featuring Soviet painters, dancers and musicians.

In January, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Joanna Stingray assembled an exhibit of underground Soviet art (which bears a surprising resemblance to that of some contemporary American artists). Stingray herself cut the record “Red Wave” two years ago from tapes of underground Soviet rock music that she smuggled out. Her husband, Soviet rock guitar player Yuri Kasparian, who lives in the Soviet Union, came to Los Angeles in May for recording sessions. Top Soviet rock star Boris Grebenschikov is scheduled to record in Los Angeles this month with CBS. And pianist Vladimir Feltsman, who recently emigrated to the United States after years of being denied an exit visa, recently performed Rachmaninoff to standing ovations at a Music Center concert.

Otis--Parsons graduate Lisa Getchell and two fashion--design classmates spent a week last September in Tbilisi, capital of Soviet Georgia, designing and producing prototype sportswear with Soviet designers--and Soviet design students are due here in the fall. Mindful of the Los Angeles market, the San Francisco--based Joe Boxer Corp., which produced the hit “Surf Russia” T--shirt last year, is considering another one with a Soviet theme for the fall-- “Ski Siberia” is one possibility.

Soviet Academician Roald Sagdayev, top man in the Soviet space program and chief science adviser to Gorbachev, came to Santa Monica in May with a Soviet delegation for a closed--door conference at the RAND Corp., continuing a dialogue about military strategy and arms control that had started in Moscow the year before.

At the final dinner and reception, he astonished and delighted the guests by leading them in an accented rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and got into a serious discussion with Santa Monica Councilman David Finkel about developing ties between Santa Monica and Odessa.

Comparatively, Soviets who come to this country are a rarity--about one--sixth the number of Americans who go to the U.S.S.R.--and they’re in demand.

“People break their necks to have Soviet visitors,” says Allen Kassof, executive director of the Princeton-based International Research and Exchanges Board, which coordinates most of the scholarly exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union. “The Soviets are the newest game in town to show your sophistication,” he says, “if you have to go to interesting, exotic places and, above all, places where you are welcome.”

At the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, which brings speakers on international relations to Los Angeles, Soviets are attracting increasingly larger crowds. Vladimir Gubaryev, science editor of Pravda and author of the Chernobyl play “Sarcophagus,” spoke to 220 people in September. Five hundred, a large crowd for a $36-a-plate meeting, had signed up to hear chief Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov for an April 20 meeting before it was canceled because of a last-minute scheduling switch.

And enthusiasm is high in academia. The University of California recently signed a program of exchanges with Leningrad University. Soviet space scientists have visited Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to talk about a joint manned spaceflight to Mars.

UCLA’s William Potter, executive director for the Center for International and Strategic Affairs, said so many Soviet arms control experts are coming to the United States that he had trouble making appointments during a recent visit to Moscow since all the senior officials were abroad at conferences--but he happily discovered that most of the people he wanted to see were on the plane he was taking home.

The new popularity of the Soviets has revived efforts to find Soviet sister cities for Southern California.

Long Beach approached Sochi in August and heard in the first week in March that the Sochi Executive Committee of the City Council had accepted. San Diego now is considering which would be better: the Baltic city of Tallinn, which is a naval port, or Vladivostok on Siberia’s Pacific coast, which could become a trading partner.

Los Angeles has no sister city relationship with any Soviet city, but Mayor Tom Bradley, his rival, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, and other city officials and businessmen are to host Soviet college students in their offices June 30 in visits sponsored by the Santa Monica--based U.S.--U.S.S.R. Youth Exchange Program.

The organization brought Soviet mountain climbers to the Rockies in June 1987, and Orange Coast College student Greg Archer recalls a starry night in Colorado, a campfire and American and Soviet climbers singing “Amazing Grace” and “Moscow Nights.”

“It was an ideal night,” he says.

Until now, Los Angeles has had limited trade contacts with the Soviet Union because of the countries’ hot-and-cold relationship and complications such as Soviet currency and investment restrictions.

Except for Armand Hammer’s well-documented business relationship with the Soviet Union, which goes back to Lenin, the only trade involving Los Angeles and the Soviets occurs about once a month when a smallish Soviet ship docks in either Los Angeles or Long Beach harbors, carrying 20 to 30 cargo containers of Stolichnaya vodka, about 800 tons of hardboard masonite and some plywood. The ship is in port less than a day; the crew goes off to Disneyland, and Julian Ship Supply brings aboard fresh vegetables and fruit.

But the work of people such as Tim Bruinsma is a sign that trade between Southern California and the Soviet Union may increase.

Two-and-a-half years ago, the Los Angeles attorney decided to study Soviet commercial law to enhance communication between the two superpowers and to make some money while doing it.

“They need everything, and they are the largest untapped market,” he says. “The United States produces everything. It only made sense that we should be investigating the potential. I began taking Russian lessons. I started learning a lot. It has been a rapid escalation.”

He has been to Moscow several times and is working on a deal to bring Soviets a machine for packaging food. In April, he -- along with 500 others interested in trading with the Soviet Union -- went to a formal state dinner attended by Gorbachev in the Kremlin’s Grand Hall of the Party Congress.

In May, he organized a conference sponsored by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and attended by 60 businessmen and lawyers, on increasing trade with the Soviet Union.

At one session, Lindsay F. Williams, president of Mattel International, the giant toy company, described “Barbie Doll Diplomacy,” his firm’s effort -- in the talking stages now -- to manufacture dolls in the Soviet Union in a joint venture.

This explosion of interest in the Soviet Union is intriguing experts.

Gorbachev’s eighth place on a list of the 10 most admired men is one indicator that American minds have been changed about the Soviet Union, a point corroborated by two Los Angeles Times polls that showed Gorbachev’s favorable rating jumping from 33 percent to 58 percent between November 1985, and December 1987, and by a third poll published by the Washington Post in January that showed Gorbachev with a 72 percent favorable rating.

More surprisingly, the last poll showed that fundamental and long-standing differences between the attitudes of Republicans and Democrats toward the Soviet Union have largely disappeared: 62 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats now say the United States can trust the Soviet Union at least somewhat, and 71 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats say they think the United States can trust Gorbachev in particular.

“The astonishing thing to me is how quickly the mentality of conservative America has changed.” says Kassof. “The hard core aside, you find people who think it very fashionable to engage in relations with the Soviets.

“It continues to be a head-scratcher -- how quickly the turnaround. It is as though nothing had ever been wrong and the ‘Evil Empire’ (as President Reagan once called it) was 100 years ago, instead of two to three years ago.

“People are tired with bad relations. They are tired of the arms race, tired of the threat of nuclear war. The changes there are absolutely fascinating, and the best way to find out more is to talk to the Soviets. Someone said it is like studying fish all your life and suddenly the fish start talking to you.”

Brainerd, president of the Citizen Exchange Council, visited traditionally conservative Orange County and was flabbergasted at what local residents told high--ranking Soviets during a specially arranged meeting in Newport Beach on May 1 and 2. THe Soviets talked about Gorbachev’s efforts to increase openness and reinvigorate the Soviet economy.

“We had people standing up saying, ‘I am a conservative, but I want you to know I sympathize with what you are trying to do, and I wish you the best,”’ he says.

Some feel the American public will move on to a new fascination. “It is just another item of pop culture,” says Prof. Michael S. Flier, chairman of UCLA8s department of Slavic languages and literature. “This is not untypical of American culture to latch onto certain figures and blow them up to mythological proportions and recycle them to games and celebrity look--alikes.”

“It won’t remain exotic very long,” Kassof agrees. “People get tired of it. We do go throught these great cycles.”

Others say events in the Soviet Union are likely to take the gloss off. Councilman Yaroslavsky, who is close to the Soviet emigre community, says: “The (Soviet) military and the ideological conservatives have not been dissolved in any way. Gorbachev has not yet demonstrated he is completely in charge. Until that happens, a wise individual will remain skeptical.

“These ‘Prague Springs’ arise from time to time only to be brutally eliminated,” he continues. “When you have these apparent openings, they have been met with equal or greater reaction from the conservative forces within a short perod of time.”

“I am still a little bit skeptical, but I would like to believe,” says Alexander Polovets, editor and publisher of the Russian-language weekly newspaper Panorama. “ Glasnost, glasnost ; we will see what happens.”

Still, in Los Angeles’ emigre community, American’s sudden interest in the Soviet theme is viewed with a certain condescension and cynicism.

Americans, Polovets says with a sigh, “are so naive. When I see a picture of Lenin on a T-shirt, I think how happy are (the wearers) being here and not having the experience of living under a communist government. They don’t know what means Lenin. They are happy they don’t know what is the justice of the communist system. I don’t hate them. I can smile.”