U.S. Rolls Out Restrained Reception : Scene: Breezy weather and an unusually subdued mood greet Gorbachev upon his arrival in Washington.

An unusually restrained Washington, its residents so ho-hum that a visitor could be forgiven for thinking the summit was taking place in Reykjavik, Iceland, or Malta or anywhere else, received Mikhail S. Gorbachev on a pleasantly cool and breezy late spring afternoon Wednesday for the start of his four days of meetings with President Bush.

Several hundred American service personnel and their families, some waving small red flags, watched as Secretary of State James A. Baker III and other State Department officials welcomed Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, at Andrews Air Force Base in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

After formal statements--Baker said that “the eyes of the world were upon you and President Bush” and Gorbachev wished “peace and well-being to every American home”--Gorbachev suggested to Baker that they move onward.

“ Vpered ,” the Soviet leader said. When the word was translated to Baker as “forward,” the secretary of state liked it so much that he repeated it in Russian, “ Vpered .” The two men then left the base in a 40-car motorcade to the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street in downtown Washington.

The caravan, escorted by police motorcyclists blaring sirens along the way, probably gave many Washington motorists their first sure realization that this was a historic summit week.

The mood of restraint in Washington could be sensed a few hours before Gorbachev arrived. The regular vendors near the White House stacked ample supplies of Bart Simpson and Washington Polo Club T-shirts, but none with Gorbachev logos or designs.

Unlike the scene during Gorbachev’s first visit to Washington in 1987, photographers did not set up life-size cardboard cutouts of the Soviet leader near the White House to entice tourists to be photographed for $5. There was no hint of Gorbymania.

A half-continent away, Minnesota officials were so excited about Gorbachev’s impending visit to Minneapolis on Sunday that they distributed 100 miles of red ribbon to 40,000 schoolchildren to decorate the sites that the Soviet leader might see during his few hours there.

But the White House had set a different tone for Washington, stressing that the meetings would stand more on business than ceremony. The city made no attempt to drum up crowds along Gorbachev’s route or to decorate the city much beyond the traditional trio of Soviet, American and District of Columbia flags on the lampposts of some important streets.

In any case, foreign leaders are no novelty in Washington.

“The city has just been less impressed with international figures over the years,” said Dan Rapoport, a Washington book publisher and longtime resident. Also, Washingtonians have seen Gorbachev before, at a time, in fact, when he struck most of the world as more magical and less vulnerable.

Yet, though the city seemed restrained, the summit still attracted its quota of summit hangers-on.

In Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, a Soviet rock band named Gaza blared its music while Robert Kunst, executive director of a Miami-based organization called Cure AIDS Now, warned journalists: “With the wall coming down, the East and West are going to sleep together.”

His posters cried out: “With Glasnost and Perestroika and Freedom Comes AIDS. Use the Peace Dividend. Cure AIDS Now.”

Vladimir Klimachkov and Yuri Vostrikov, two Soviet immigrants who described themselves as political refugees, sat in a corner of the park and held up handwritten signs that claimed they had been continually harassed by the CIA and Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Anticipating more demonstrations in the days ahead, especially from Baltic protesters, National Park Service workers were putting fencing around the grass in the park.