Gorbachev Press Aide ‘Not Fitzwater’

Last month, the Soviet Union got its first U.S.-style executive presidency. On Tuesday, it got a presidential press secretary, Arkady A. Maslennikov, who will brief reporters on the words and deeds of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in a new move toward greater political openness.

But the Kremlin is not the White House, and Maslennikov said he will operate differently from Marlin Fitzwater, President Bush’s spokesman.

“First of all, I am not Fitzwater, I am Maslennikov,” the 58-year-old journalist said, acknowledging that he lacks the practiced smoothness that American spokesmen are seen here as having. “That is to say, the first difference.”

The second difference perhaps is that Maslennikov has one telephone and no assistants, in contrast to the massive White House press office .

Standing before a large picture showing the Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin exhorting the masses on Red Square, Maslennikov pledged that there will be frequent, but not daily, briefings at the Kremlin for Soviet and foreign reporters.

Any subject may be brought up, he said, although he plans to focus each briefing on key issues. Gorbachev himself will hold open press conferences from time to time, Maslennikov said.

He was prepared Tuesday for questions on Lithuania--the next step is up to the Lithuanian leadership, not Moscow, he said--but he had little to say on economic issues despite a raging debate over controversial economic reforms.

He could offer a few words on Soviet-American relations and the “very important talks” that Eduard A. Shevardnadze will hold there this week with Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III. But he had to plead ignorance when asked Gorbachev’s agenda for the next two or three days.

When asked where Gorbachev would live--his apartment in Lenin Hills, the dacha west of the capital where he spends much of the year or, perhaps, in the Kremlin--Maslennikov seem perplexed, and even more so when asked how much Gorbachev was paid as the country’s executive president.

“I am not quite sure that Gorbachev will live here,” he said. “But, no doubt, it is going to be his working office.”

Maslennikov’s appointment should help the government’s efforts to open Soviet society and allow people to participate more actively in their government. But it also reflects Gorbachev’s growing personal authority.

The role of Gennady I. Gerasimov, the chief Foreign Ministry spokesmen for nearly five years and thus the face of Kremlin policy, seems likely to be diminished as Maslennikov’s grows.

Maslennikov, who was trained as an economist, worked as a journalist for 25 years, including six years in India and three years in Pakistan. He then became editor of the Western nations desk of Pravda before moving to the Supreme Soviet as its public information officer.