Visiting Armenian Leader Is Pessimistic : Eastern Bloc: ‘We do not have <i> perestroika,’ </i> says Rafael Kazaryan. He calls Gorbachev a ‘neo-Stalinist.’

To be born and raised in these United States is to be told that, in this land of opportunity, you can grow up to be President. Getting straight A’s and eating your broccoli is thought to help.

To be born Armenian and raised in America is to be steeped in another dream.

“Many of us are hoping one day to have a free country again,” said teacher Linda Bulbulian, whose classroom at Ramona Elementary School in Hollywood is packed with Armenian immigrant children. “Many of these children want to go home.”

Bulbulian’s pupils on Monday met a page from their sad, proud, hopeful history--although the significance of their visitor, Rafael Kazaryan, seemed lost on the youngsters. When students were asked if they had any questions, one eagerly raised his hand and announced to the class that he had seen Kazaryan on TV. There was no question.

Kazaryan, a leader of Armenia’s nationalist movement and the first non-communist vice president of the Soviet Armenia parliament, spared the children the harsher truths of life and politics back home.

To the children, the 66-year-old Kazaryan--who is on a week-long tour of the United States and Canada--seemed more the gentle grandfather than the intellectual firebrand who challenges Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

He did not discuss with them, for example, the chemical spill last week that sickened more than 100 Armenians, and the assault on KGB headquarters in the Armenian capital that followed. Nor did Kazaryan share the tale of his political rise--a path that included a six-month prison stint in Moscow in 1988. His jail time, in a sense, carried on a family tradition: Kazaryan’s father and grandfather had been imprisoned in the gulags of Josef Stalin.

For all Gorbachev’s efforts in Eastern Europe, “It’s a pity, but in his country, he is a neo-Stalinist,” Kazaryan said in an interview.

“We have glasnost in Armenia, or we wouldn’t be talking,” Kazaryan said, referring to the opening of foreign relations. But as for internal reforms heralded by Gorbachev, “we do not have perestroika. “

Time and again, Kazaryan would preface his remarks with the phrase, “it’s a pity.” But pity is not want Armenia wants or needs, Kazaryan said. Although its economy has been ravaged by the devastating 1988 earthquake and territorial strife with neighboring Soviet Azerbajian, Armenia needs political support and investment more than relief supplies, he said. “We don’t want to be a beggar. We don’t want you to pity us.”

Before stopping by Ramona Elementary, where about 300 children are first- or second-generation Armenians, Kazaryan met with senators in Washington, Armenian scholars and members of the Armenian and American press. Armenian leaders estimate that their community in Southern California, centered in Glendale and Hollywood, numbers 250,000.

A leading physicist, Kazaryan also met with scientists and industrialists, hoping to lure support for his homeland’s budding high-tech enterprises.

Kazaryan predicted that independence will come for Lithuania ahead of the five-year time schedule proposed by Gorbachev. Other Baltic states will follow, and Armenia’s time will come later, he said.

Economic strength is one reason the Baltic states will achieve independence first, he said. Another, he said, is the Western perception that strife between Azerbajianis and Armenians is between “two wild peoples.” He suggested the two republics could co-exist peacefully without Moscow’s intervention.

“Of course, it’s a pity,” he added, that nationalist extremists had attacked the KGB headquarters. He stressed in interviews that the violent incident came about after a recent raid on Armenian villages by Soviet soldiers and the chemical leak at a controversial industrial plant.

After learning of the attack on KGB offices in a telephone call Saturday, “I did not get much sleep,” Kazaryan said, adding that he is fearful of a stronger crackdown by Moscow.

To outsiders, Kazaryan’s transformation from political prisoner to a leader of the Soviet Armenian government has made him a symbol of greater political freedom within the Soviet Union. But Kazaryan, who was jailed along with other members of Armenia’s so-called Karabagh Committee, said his release grew out of a changing political atmosphere and pressure from groups such as Amnesty International as well as scientists in the Soviet Union and outside the country.

After spending several weeks in a cell with hard-core criminals, Kazaryan threatened to commit suicide unless relocated. The threat worked, he said, because Soviet officials were fearful of scandal. “After that, I was among very honest thieves who were proud to be with me,” he said with a grin.

In a brief reception at Ramona Elementary, Kazaryan told Los Angeles school board President Jackie Goldberg to expect more Armenian students. “It’s a pity, but there will be more refugees, more immigrants,” he said. “. . . There’s only one way to minimize the number of immigrants--and that’s to improve conditions in our country.”

Armenia may be many years from independence, but Kazaryan proudly pointed out that the Armenian nationalists took to the streets before the Lithuanians did. Lithuanian leaders are said to have been emboldened by the efforts of Armenian nationalists--a notion that Kazaryan finds comforting.

Kazaryan confessed that as an 18-year-old radio operator in the Soviet army, he had participated in Stalin’s takeover of the Baltic states.

“It’s a pity,” he said, “. . . but it’s true.”