A Popular Soviet Premiere : Film: ‘Gone With the Wind’ comes to Moscow courtesy of Ted Turner, and Soviet moviegoers give a damn.

In the Russian translation of “Gone With the Wind,” Rhett Butler turns to Scarlett O’Hara and says: “Frankly, my dear, I spit on all that.”

The translation may not have quite the same ring as the memorable original--”Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”--but the 1939 American classic, which made its long-awaited Soviet premiere on Friday, still had a special resonance for thrilled viewers.

“Scarlett definitely has a Russian character; she is a real Russian woman,” Nelli Bersineva, a construction engineer, said after the lights came up. “Look at all that can happen to her, but in the end she has her land.”

Leningrad mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak, who attended the gala premiere along with about 2,500 Muscovites in unaccustomed evening finery, said he thought the film had special relevance for Russians amid current turmoil.

“We see how American people lived through their war and changed their lives,” Sobchak said. “The old system dies and the new system is born. This is a very contemporary film for our Russia today, because we are going through some of the same.”

Media mogul Ted Turner, who co-sponsored the film’s indefinite engagement in Moscow, told the Soviet audience that “Gone With the Wind” resembled the Leo Tolstoy classic “War and Peace,” with its portraits of lives disrupted by war.

“The message of the film is appropriate to the difficult time of change here,” he said.

Turner and actress Jane Fonda, in Moscow for a visit that included a meeting with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and a Fonda-led jog around the Kremlin for 700 Soviet women, were the main focus of a premiere gala that lent the utilitarian October Theater a touch of Hollywood glitter for a night.

Outside on Kalinin Street, the broad avenue leading up to the Kremlin, a Red Army band played and revelers danced on the sidewalk near a giant billboard showing the classic scene--Scarlett and Rhett in a clinch with Atlanta in flames in the background.

Desperate would-be viewers offered up to four times the 15-ruble ticket price--or about $25 dollars at the official rate--to get in. Before the film began, a copy of Rhett Butler’s tie was auctioned off for 150 rubles, and movie quiz-show contestants tried to answer toughies such as the age of Mickey Mouse and the first film to star Barbra Streisand. (The answers are, respectively, 51 and “Funny Girl.”)

Flash bulbs flared, sequined dresses sparkled and champagne flowed in a display of public gaiety exceedingly rare in these times of political instability and economic collapse.

Proceeds were earmarked for an anti-AIDS fund sponsored by the progressive weekly Ogonyok.

Attendees included Nanuli Shevardnadze, wife of the popular Soviet foreign minister, who greeted Fonda with a complimentary “Are you the legendary Jane Fonda?”

Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but Mrs. Shevardnadze’s presence reflected organizers’ attempts to play up the connection between the American state and the Soviet republic of Georgia, the Shevardnadzes’ home. The film also was screened in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, on Saturday.

For its premiere, “Gone With the Wind” was subtitled and retained its original soundtrack, but future showings will be dubbed--leaving loyal viewers to wonder just how Russian translators will manage to get across Prissy’s complaints about “birfin’ babies” and Scarlett’s sighing drawl.

Whatever the potential dubbing problems, initial audience reaction indicates that “Gone With the Wind” will be a guaranteed hit. Upcoming runs are expected to reach most of the country throughout 1991.

“The actors are wonderful, especially Mammy,” computer programmer Galine Cherkova said. “After watching this movie, I want to live, to do something.”

Valery Shorunov, director of a language academy, said he had read Margaret Mitchell’s novel30 years ago and his long wait to see the movie was worth it. “Artistically, it is great,” he said. “It clearly shows that in all the world, we must most depend on ourselves.”

Bersineva, who saw Scarlett as a real Russian woman, expanded on her view. “To love and be honest like Melanie is easy. To love passionately and violently like Scarlett is harder. I think Scarlett is a higher figure. I see by this film that there is a great connection between Russians and Americans--our souls are close.”

Many Soviet viewers had already seen “Gone With the Wind” on underground videocassettes, and the novel came out officially in Moscow in 1982.

Turner, whose MGM library owns the rights to the film, is already well known in the Soviet Union for his sponsorship of the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow and Cable News Network, which is beamed to many Soviet televisions by satellite.