Soviets Take Up 2 Californians on Offer of Help : Executives Inundated With Requests for Advice on How to Improve Industries

In an attempt at “citizen diplomacy,” two California capitalists have made the Soviet Union a most non-capitalistic offer: free help in improving its troubled consumer industries.

The Americans, Harold Willens and Wesley Bilson, proposed the no-strings-attached consulting aid in a letter to a Moscow weekly newspaper on Nov. 18. So far it has sparked some 3,500 requests--from ventures based in urban Moscow all the way to the far reaches of Siberia.

“The letter was like a match igniting smoldering coals,” said Willens, 74, a Brentwood resident long active in organizing U.S. business executives for social causes.

In it, the Americans noted the importance of the economic reforms that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is attempting. The reforms may be doomed, Soviet leaders concede, unless they succeed quickly in getting more consumer goods into households throughout the country.

The Americans suggested that even one factory’s success story could serve as a showcase, inspiring others in the sprawling nation to follow suit.

“We are wondering, therefore, whether the entrepreneurial business experience and skills that we (and others we know) have acquired may be of help,” wrote Willens and Bilson, whose personal experiences include U.S. ventures in textile machinery, real estate and health care.

From a startling array of Soviet enterprises, the answer was: Yes, please help.

A Leningrad medical cooperative asked to rent U.S. medical equipment and said its managers could benefit from consulting help. A construction enterprise in Moldavia, near Romania, wanted aid in creating a modern equipment plant.

An enterprising reader in Volgograd, in the nation’s south, asked to meet the Americans in Moscow to discuss ways to improve production of children’s clothing as well as to build a “business class” hotel.

Most of the letters came in Russian, which the Americans have had translated. But some came in English, such as this one from a cooperative in Vladivostok seeking help to build an orphanage:

“In your country, you have got assembly line cottages, necessary equipment for them and, most important, necessary expertise,” cooperative members wrote. “So we hope for your assistance in the project.”

So far, the Americans have agreed to try to help three enterprises: a brassiere factory in Moscow, a clothing plant in Moldavia and a Leningrad-based garment cooperative that is converting a military base to a clothing plant.

“If they were pitching this company to me in Los Angeles, I’d invest in it,” Bilson said of the cooperative. “These are aggressive, exciting, motivated people.”

The two Americans are veterans both of the business world and social activism.

Willens is the retired chief executive of Factory Equipment Corp. and Wilshop Corp., ventures in textile machinery and commercial real estate. A soft-spoken yet driven man, he spearheaded the 1982 California initiative for a nuclear weapons freeze, which prevailed on the ballot.

Bilson, a resident of Pacific Palisades, has owned and managed health-care facilities in California, Hawaii and Nevada for 25 years. Among others, he owns the Delano Regional Medical Center near Bakersfield.

The two have had an unusual partnership in “socio-political” ventures dating back to the mid-1960s, when Willens organized a group of businessmen against the Vietnam War. In a similar vein, they view the current changes in the Soviet Union as offering a way out of the arms race and, therefore, toward a safer world.

“There are moments in history when self-interest and altruism intersect,” Willens wrote in a memo outlining the current quest. “We see this opportunity as such a moment.”

And as they see it, the moment calls for “citizen diplomacy,” an effort to reach beyond borders of ocean and culture by regular members of the public. The letters they have gotten--and that continue to pour in--seem to highlight the potential of their approach.

“I am convinced you are not the only ones in the U.S.A.” who want to help, wrote a man from Fergana, near the Afghanistan border, who proposed improving a cement plant. “The desire to help others in need is a virtue of most people, and when a good cause is served, a person is experiencing a special gratification.”

The Americans have found the torrential response both moving and sobering. For one thing, they plan to focus only on a handful of ventures, which means that the vast majority of letter writers may be disappointed.

“We’re very concerned about raising expectations, then seeming arrogant in our selection,” Bilson said.

For those they do select, the Americans are offering the hands-on advice of experts they know or are able to find through their own contacts. In addition, they may host some Soviets in the United States, where the visitors can see the U.S. style of doing business up close.

“We’d love to have 10,000 business executives read something about this and say, ‘Jeepers, I want to help too,’ ” said Willens. “But the last thing we want is to give the impression that we’re more important than we are.”

The unusual venture began last August at the Telluride, Colo., home of John Naisbitt, author of “Megatrends.” At the writer’s invitation, Willens and Bilson met with Soviet officials, including four members of the party’s central committee.

“We said, ‘We’ll come if we can spend half an hour with the right guys,’ ” Bilson recalls. The Soviet response: “We want to spend a week.”

After a week of exchanging ideas, the Californians were convinced that the Soviets were open to the possibility of American aid. They then mailed a letter to the Soviet weekly Argumenti i Facti, and Bilson followed up with a visit at the beginning of December.

During his 11-day trip, Bilson went to Moscow and Leningrad, met with editors of the newspaper, influential economist Abel G. Aganbegyan and dozens of people interested in his ideas. He was interviewed on national television and became something of a star.

“He’s a celebrity over there,” said Julie Shaw, an American who was in the Soviet Union at the time, organizing a U.S.-Soviet management exchange program for the nonprofit Esalen Institute in San Francisco. “He had people trying to get autographs from him.”

During the trip, Bilson was witness both to the new ways of freedom and openness as well as the persistence of the creaky old bureaucracy.

He faced restrictions on using his camera in department stores and factories and found it hard to alter his visa for a trip to Leningrad, even with the help of sympathetic Soviet editors. Once in Leningrad, he recalled, “We had to get written permission to drive a taxi outside the city.”

In addition, he saw firsthand the troubles of an economy that--despite great wealth in natural resources--lags far behind the West in its ability to provide the basic conveniences of modern life.

The Moscow brassiere factory, for example, has been hindered by its inability to acquire certain wire materials that are available in other countries. “They’ve got 2,000 workers, and they can’t produce a brassiere that the Soviet women want, including the ones that work there,” Bilson said.

His efforts come at a time the Soviet leadership has shown new interest in once-taboo Western economic approaches, including entrepreneurial management and other elements of a free market.

Earlier this month, for example, the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter announced a new U.S.-Soviet effort to encourage joint economic ventures with initial possibilities including food processing, pollution control and medical equipment.

But Bilson and Willens stress that their own approach is different because they are participating in any joint ventures that may develop. In a small sense, their goal is merely to provide a friendly boost to a few worthy yet struggling enterprises.

In a more basic sense, however, their wish is to establish some visible examples of efficient, entrepreneurial industry that will be publicized by Soviet media.

Willens is perhaps as familiar as anyone with the concept of using limited efforts for maximum political results. His efforts to organize business executives against the Vietnam War, for example, gained national attention because the protesters were such an influential--and unexpected--group.

In a 1984 book on the perils of the arms race, he pointed to the trimtab--a device that helps balance airplanes and racing yachts--as an example of the great feats that can be accomplished through careful leverage.

The trimtab metaphor, borrowed from R. Buckminster Fuller, applies to his current venture, as well, Willens believes.

His hope: “that a few Americans might have made a small contribution toward keeping this remarkable historical shift from being destroyed.”