Visitors Find Soviet Trip Can Be Risky Business : Tourism: Crimes against travelers to the Soviet Union are up this year. Among the worst cities are Moscow and Leningrad.

Tourists beware: The Soviet Union is not the “safe” travel destination it once was.

Crime is up 33.3% this year, according to Tass, the official Soviet news agency. The news is worse when you look at the figures for violent crimes (up 42.4%), property crimes (up 54.1%) and street crimes (up 77.1%).

And more bad news: Among the areas where street crime is the worst are the prime tourist cities of Moscow and Leningrad.

Tass reported that between January and July of this year, 2,000 crimes were committed against foreigners. Eighty-five percent of those were property crimes, it said.

The situation is so serious that authorities recently decided to set up a special police force to deal with crime against foreigners in 46 cities in the Soviet Union, the official Communist daily paper, Pravda, reported.

“They have to do something. They’re anxious not to lose tourists,” said Mark Sanna, regional security officer at the American Embassy in Moscow, which works closely with the local police.

How to stay safe? Police here warn tourists not to enter into negotiations with black marketeers or prostitutes for the sale of foreign currency or other goods such as clothes or electronics. Most of the crimes against foreigners were committed during these negotiations, Tass reported.

But Western diplomats consider taxis the most dangerous items for tourists. The mildest crime tourists may encounter with taxi drivers is their demand for foreign currency. It is illegal to deal in foreign currency in the Soviet Union and for Soviets to own it.

But tourists leaving hotels more often than not find that drivers refuse to take them anywhere in exchange for rubles. And they are demanding exorbitant rates: $15 to $20 for a 3-ruble (about 50 cents U.S.) ride.

“Tourists, especially those at the Cosmos Hotel on the outskirts of the city, feel trapped,” one Moscow-based Western diplomat explained. “They don’t know the language. Because they can’t read the (Cyrillic) alphabet, it’s difficult for them to ride the subways, so they are more dependent on taxis than they may be in other countries.”

More frightening was the diplomat’s account of reports at other embassies of theft at knifepoint by taxi drivers. “One taxi will take you from the airport. About halfway to the city, another taxi will cut off the one you are a passenger in. The other taxi driver threatens you at knifepoint while your driver looks on helplessly. We expect they are operating as a team,” the diplomat said.

Indeed, Brazilian journalist Jose Arbex reported his story to the Soviet weekly newspaper Moscow News after he was robbed in this fashion, to warn other foreigners. He lost $1,370 in the robbery.

And Sanna said he receives six to seven reports a month of embassy staff being robbed in taxis.

It’s more expensive, but tourists may want to book drivers from the Intourist agencies at the airport and the hotels, one diplomat advised. She added that in another twist on the taxi scam, gangsters watch passengers getting into cabs with saleable items such as VCRs, then follow the taxi to the customer’s home or hotel. That home or room then becomes the target of a break-in.

The problem has grown to such an extent that Tass recently reported that the manager of the Soviet taxi agency promised to put lookouts at hotels and other tourist spots to watch for potential problems.

Though foreigners who live here are less likely to use cabs because they often have their own cars and drivers, they still risk being robbed either on the street or through break-ins of their apartments or cars.

Sanna said embassy personnel frequently have their pockets picked along a bridge leading from the embassy to the Ukraine Hotel, an Intourist hotel that attracts criminal elements who want foreign currency. He warned that tourist sites such as Novodevichy Convent, where former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is buried, are other popular pick-pocket areas.

Sue Meadows, director of day care and the preschool center at the American Embassy, was a robbery victim while shopping at the Georgian market--another hot tourist spot--in Moscow.

She was “jostled and pushed while she was carrying our 2-year-old and walking with our 7- and 8-year-olds,” her husband Doug said. “When she got to our car, she realized that her purse had been unzipped and her wallet with all her credit cards and foreign currency stolen.”

That wasn’t the first time the Meadowses have been victims of crime in Moscow. Foreigners posted to Moscow live in compounds guarded by militia men whose job it is to report on their activities. However, as Soviet society continues to open through glasnost , some of these “mili men,” as Westerners call them, have been withdrawn from residence compounds.

Said Meadows, manager of the agricultural product department at DuPont’s Moscow office, whose building has no mili man: “Our car has been broken into three times this year and our radio/cassette player and speakers stolen. In addition, we heard there was a break-in in an apartment on the top floor of our building.”

The weekly newspaper Nedelya recently reported that there were 4,000 break-ins in private apartments in Moscow last year. For foreigners with VCRs that can be sold for up to 11,000 rubles on the black market, the fears of break-ins are growing.

Residents at a new foreign compound in Moscow that opened this summer without a mili man organized a petition after several break-ins of apartments and cars, and finally got 24-hour guard duty.

Said John Lombard, Moscow bureau chief for the Australian Broadcasting Corp., whose wife Jean organized the petition: “The rising crime rate is quite significant. I don’t feel personally threatened when I’m outside, but if you’re a single woman walking back from the metro out here, you probably aren’t too comfortable.”

Carey Goldberg, a Moscow-based free-lance reporter for the Boston Globe who lives in the same building, agrees. “I feel less safe now than I used to. It used to be a plus to look like a foreigner. I felt as if it gave you immunity to crime. Now I play it down.

“I bought dull-colored coats to try to look more Soviet because I’m more afraid of robbery now, though I’m not worried about being assaulted. I think people here are greedy for foreign currency, but they are not violent.”

But Sanna of the American Embassy said he has had reports from two American students who were raped here since January. And, he said, another diplomat was attacked on the street. Her assailants tried to push her into a cab, but she bit one of them on the wrist and escaped. “But she was traumatized,” he said.

In a country where Westerners have access to food, clothing, electronic goods and other consumer items that Soviets do not, it is not surprising that the crime rate is increasing as Soviets become frustrated with their plummeting standard of living. “The gap is growing. You feel like the aristocracy now. It’s uncomfortable,” Goldberg said.

Robert Tonsing, a Moscow-based free-lance photographer from California, said he and his wife, Ann Imso, a correspondent with the Associated Press here, are lucky.

“Nobody’s even stolen our windshield wipers (a much-in-demand commodity).”

But, he added, “I have a foreign car; I’m a marked target. I don’t worry too much about being robbed, but I don’t go to bad parts of the city, either.

“One friend visiting us had his car broken into and his wallet and papers stolen within five minutes of parking his car in a bad section of the city. Though his car was a Lada, it was identified by its plates (which have different colors for foreigners) as being a foreigner’s car.”

Once aware of the potential problems, most here agree, tourists should be able to avoid them by being careful. And as several Americans said: “I still feel safer walking around here than I do in New York City.”