NAMES IN THE NEWS : <i> Glasnost </i> Comes to ‘Amerika’

Glasnost has come to the home of “Amerika,” a 1986 television miniseries that depicted fictitious life in the United States after a Soviet takeover.

Tecumseh high school and elementary students recently began receiving responses to letters they wrote in August to students in Ryazan, 150 miles southwest of Moscow.

Teachers are hoping the letters educate their students about the vastness of the world and about the society and politics of the Soviet Union, which had “taken over” Tecumseh during the filming of the miniseries in this southeastern Nebraska town of 1,900.

“I hope they get a better understanding of the world--that it’s a much bigger place than just Tecumseh, and that people around the world do similar things,” said Janene Bartels, a first-grade teacher who helped initiate the project.

The letters already have dispelled some stereotypes.

Jamie Carson, a 17-year-old senior, said she perceived the Soviet Union as “cold, gray and very strict” but discovered that teen interests in music, clothes and sports were very similar.

The letter exchange was initiated by Col. Barney Oldfield, a Johnson County native who is now a Beverly Hills author, publicist and consultant on Soviet affairs to the Litton Corp. The wife of Oldfield’s Russian interpreter, Galina Korzhikova, is an English teacher in Ryazan.