Open House at Back Door to Russia : Diplomacy: In the spirit of <i> glasnost, </i> a rarely visited Soviet outpost in the Bering Strait plays host to a U.S. delegation.

It was an unusual open house at this isolated Soviet outpost where 70 camouflage-clad Border Patrol conscripts guard the back door to Europe.

The treeless island is a rocky and gray domain in the middle of the Bering Strait, a chokepoint for vessels operating in Arctic waters.

Big Diomede is 25 miles from the Soviet mainland and just 2.7 miles from the U.S. island of Little Diomede and its 140 villagers.

The border and international dateline are midway between the two islands.

This fall, the small military garrison played host to a four-hour visit by Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper, Adjutant General John Schaeffer, a uniformed KGB colonel, a dozen government aides and four U.S. journalists.

From the advent of the Cold War in 1948 until an August, 1987, crossing in 44-degree water by marathon swimmer Lynne Cox, Big Diomede Island was strictly off-limits to Westerners.

The Soviet border guards and a handful of Alaska Eskimo Scouts warily eyed one another across the strait with binoculars, gathering whatever intelligence they could.

Then came glasnost and a rapid warm-up in relations between the two nations.

“It was exciting to be able to do this after spending so many years of my life looking at them from the other side,” said Schaeffer, who was traveling with Cowper on a 12-day, 6,700-mile “trade and friendship” mission through the Soviet Far East.

Schaeffer is Alaska’s ranking military officer. A major general, he is a member of Cowper’s Cabinet in peacetime and would answer to the Pentagon in war. He commands the Alaska Army and Air National Guard.

“I was impressed the most by their attitude,” Schaeffer said. “Things have changed and they were so open.

“We could have seen almost anything we wanted to if we had had the time. We don’t have that same openness in the military in the United States yet.”

After arriving in an orange Aeroflot helicopter, the group was escorted through a headquarters building that includes a dormitory, dining area, library, armory and briefing room with walls displaying illustrations of British, French and U.S. missiles.

A small museum has a sign over the door in Cyrillic proclaiming it the “room of international friendship.”

It contains a number of souvenirs from the Bering Bridge expedition, a group of Soviet and American adventurers who used sled dogs, skis and skin boats last spring in a 1,200-mile “friendship trek” around the Soviet Far East and western Alaska.

Bad weather in April forced the 12-member team to spend several days on the island.

Books, mostly paperbacks, are well-thumbed. A closed-circuit TV set sat unused in a corner.

Outside were fuel storage tanks for diesel generators, half a dozen tall radio antennas and a stairway leading up a rocky finger to a concrete bunker overlooking the ocean.

Lt. Col. Vladimir Starukov, a KGB Border Patrol officer assigned to escort Schaeffer through the first week of the trip, seemed wryly amused as he answered reporters’ questions through an interpreter.

“Morale is good here because conditions are so harsh and soldiers band together,” Starukov said. “They’re here to watch the sea. But observation is just part of their duties, like getting ready for battle.”

Most of the draftees are in their teens, calendar-watchers who slowly turn the pages on the days left in their two-year hitch.

“Soldiers get eight rubles a month for candy and cigarettes,” the colonel said. “Everything else they have. Food and shelter. The trip home once a year is free.”

Starukov agreed, however, that salaries are low.

“Mom helps out,” he said about furlough expenses.

Although there is occasional contact with Eskimo hunters and fishermen from Alaska, there are no Siberian-Yup’ik- or Inupiat-speaking troops on the island.

“They have to take English at school, although not many speak it,” Starukov said.

Slava Vasiliv is a 19-year-old sergeant from a small village on the Volga River in the Soviet interior. He served a year near Anadyr before arriving on the island and has another year remaining before going home.

“It’s not long here,” Vasiliv said. “Everyone has their own interests. Their lives are full of work.

“It’s considered a lonely place because it’s on an island, but in reality, we get a lot of guests. Correspondents. Entertainers. People bringing in supplies.”