Soviets Delighted at How Well the Talks Have Gone : Diplomacy: Officials liked Bush’s willingness to meet Gorbachev’s needs and his reluctance to use Soviet crises for leverage.

After much anguished hand-wringing over the problems afflicting Soviet-American relations, strategic arms reduction and German reunification, Soviet officials expressed delight Saturday at how well the superpower summit had gone.

Their fears gone that President Bush would try to take advantage of Moscow’s multiple domestic crises to win key concessions from Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, they described the summit as the most successful in the two countries’ often troubled relationship.

“The most fruitful summit in the history of our relations,” Yevgeny M. Primakov, a key adviser to Gorbachev, declared. “An across-the-board success,” exulted another Soviet official. “The spirit of Malta thrives,” said Georgy Arbatov, the leading Soviet specialist on the United States.

With approval by Bush and Gorbachev of the basic outlines of a future treaty to reduce the superpowers’ strategic arsenals and of a trade agreement that Moscow had long sought, Soviet expectations for the summit were met, senior Soviet officials said.

What made the meeting a more fundamental success in their view, however, was Bush’s apparent willingness to meet Gorbachev’s needs when he felt he could and his reluctance to use the Soviet Union’s political and economic crises for leverage in the negotiations.

“What we have done to reach this point--the trust that we have developed in one another, the hard questions we have had to resolve, the compromises that we have worked out--are unprecedented, absolutely unprecedented,” said one Gorbachev adviser.

“In this process, a new relationship has developed, one in which we consciously try to see the other’s point of view and make sure what we propose meets his needs. That is so different from the old way of seeking every advantage and, even when there is none, scoring a few points against the opponent. This is what we had hoped for.”

With these results, the officials argued, Gorbachev will return to Moscow this week much strengthened after weeks of speculation that his domestic problems had reached the point that the Soviet Union was approaching collapse and his own time as leader was nearly over.

Primakov, a member of the Soviet Presidential Council and an alternate member of the Communist Party Politburo, said a major reason for the success of the Bush-Gorbachev summit has been the scope of the problems discussed and agreed upon.

“We have cleared away many things that used to be obstacles on our way forward,” he said. “At the same time, the leaders of the two countries outlined issues on which there could be advances in the future.”

Arbatov, director of the U.S.A. and Canada Institute in Moscow, said this summit built on the cooperative spirit developed by the two leaders at Malta.

“We have developed with this meeting and the one at Malta last year a new maturity in our relationship that is quite important because it allows us to approach problems with the aim of settling them, not seeking advantage,” Arbatov said.

A key development, according to Soviet observers, was Bush’s decision to proceed with approval of a trade agreement that, if ratified by the Senate, will pave the way for normalization of trade between the two countries.

The trade accord was quickly negotiated after the Malta summit in December, but approval was held up to underscore U.S. concern for the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are seeking to secede from the Soviet Union.

“We understood that there was a lot of domestic pressure on President Bush to delay this treaty,” a Soviet official said. “But he was able to see that we are trying to resolve the Lithuanian crisis through negotiations and to appreciate what this trade agreement would mean for Soviet-American relations overall.”

Although the immediate benefit to Soviet-American trade would be minimal, economic relations have been a contentious issue for nearly 20 years, and signing of the agreement was an important symbol in the Soviet Union that the relationship is improving.

“People want to know what they get out of better relations with the United States, what they get generally from Gorbachev’s foreign policy, and the trade agreement gives them the hope that we will be able to emerge from our economic crisis a bit sooner and with some American help,” the official said.

“It is symbolic, yes, but we need such beacons of hope right now.”

Soviet officials readily acknowledged that significant problems remain--the military status of a reunified Germany foremost among them. And those involved in the complex arms control negotiations said that considerable hard work and difficult political decisions will be required if the envisioned treaties on nuclear weapons and conventional armed forces are to be signed by the end of the year.

“Arms treaties are not made in heaven or at summits,” said a Soviet arms negotiator. “We will try to do what our presidents have agreed upon, but we still have much, much work to do. I could go through the whole list of open problems, but just in the text of the treaty we will have to resolve hundreds upon hundreds of differences.”

Severe differences remain over Germany’s military status after reunification. The United States contends that a unified Germany must be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and of its military structure. The Soviet Union asserts that this would constitute a threat to its security.

“For us, the German problem is the creation of guarantees that never again will a war start from German territory,” Arbatov said. “I think that many Europeans, and maybe even some Americans and I hope Germans, will share this understanding of the problem.”

Throughout the summit, Gorbachev and other Soviet officials had stressed the sensitivity of the issue for Moscow. On Saturday, Valentin Falin, the head of the Communist Party’s international affairs department, said that he feels the intensive discussions “will give the U.S. government some impetus to understand Soviet concerns.”

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, will continue discussion of the question with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in meetings in Europe later this month, and Soviet officials said they believe the United States has begun to appreciate the need for what they called “a balance of interests” and would work to find a compromise.

SUMMITS THROUGH THE YEARS: 1955-89

Since World War II, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States have met in 17 superpower summits and less formal sessions:

1955 Geneva, July 18-23--President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin.

1959 Camp David, Md., Sept. 25-27--Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev.

1960 Paris, May 16--Eisenhower and Khrushchev. Summit falls through on second day when Khrushchev demands an apology over the U-2 spy plane incident.

1961 Vienna, June 3-4--President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev. The two argue, and their talks on a nuclear test ban and arms control produce no formal agreements.

1967 Glassboro, N.J., June 23-25--President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin.

1972 Moscow, May 22-24--President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev. They sign ABM missile treaty and reach key agreements on SALT I pact limiting strategic weapons.

1973 Washington and San Clemente, Calif., June 18-25--Nixon and Brezhnev. They sign Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War.

1974 Moscow and Yalta, June 27-July 3--Nixon and Brezhnev. Results include a ban on some underground nuclear tests and an agreement on economic and technical cooperation.

1974 Vladivostok, Soviet Union, Nov. 23-24--President Gerald R. Ford and Brezhnev. They sign a tentative agreement to limit strategic nuclear weapons.

1975 Helsinki, July 30-Aug 2--Ford and Brezhnev. Strategic arms are discussed at meeting of 35 world leaders.

1979 Vienna, June 15-18--President Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev. Seven years of strategic arms limitation talks are concluded with the signing of SALT II.

1985 Geneva, Nov. 19-21--President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

1986 Reykjavik, Iceland, Oct. 11-12--Reagan and Gorbachev. Tentative accord calling for cuts in strategic arms and mid-range missiles falls through over “Star Wars” disagreements.

1987 Washington, Dec. 7-10--Reagan and Gorbachev. They sign Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, the first arms-control pact requiring destruction of nuclear weapons.

1988 Moscow, May 29-June 2--Reagan and Gorbachev. Several provisions of START nuclear arms treaty are reaffirmed.

1988 New York, Dec. 7--Reagan and Gorbachev.

1989 Malta, Dec. 2-3--Bush and Gorbachev. They agree to complete a START agreement in 1990.