Gorbachev Sees Peril in Souring U.S.-Soviet Ties

In a signal of new frictions developing between the superpowers, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Sunday that he is worried about a shift in the American attitude toward the Soviet Union, and he cautioned that the world could once again “plunge into the abyss of the Cold War.”

Gorbachev has often emphasized the fragility of superpower ties, but Sunday’s was an unusually vivid warning, and it left analysts and Western diplomats in Moscow speculating about the possible specific causes of the Soviet president’s discontent.

The cool American reception to Moscow’s pending request for $1.5 billion in farm credits could be worrying Gorbachev, they said; or the snags in arms-control talks that threaten to delay this summer’s summit; or the disappointing response from American business to Soviet calls to come and invest.

Or perhaps, one diplomat said, “He just senses that, on the part of American society in general, he’s viewed less positively than he was nine months ago.”

According to the official Soviet news agency Tass, Gorbachev invited Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch for a conversation in the Kremlin and “shared his concern with his guest about the recent signs of a shift in the American attitude toward the Soviet Union.”

“This is reflected not only in statements but in certain actions in the economic and political spheres,” Gorbachev was quoted as saying. “One should always think about the special value of the relations of two such countries and not subject them to unnecessary testing, especially at such a critical moment.

“If what was achieved at the end of the last Administration and in the George Bush period is undermined,” the Soviet president added, “the world could once again plunge into the abyss of the Cold War, or a semi-Cold War.”

In recent months, the superpower “partnership” that Gorbachev has cultivated with the United States has appeared most threatened by American apprehensions about the Kremlin’s much-trumpeted shift to the right, particularly as reflected in the military uprisings in the Baltic republics of Latvia and Lithuania during the winter.

But now that Gorbachev has apparently resigned himself to letting go of six of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics and appointed a tough new prime minister to do the economic dirty work, he has begun to show definite signs of shifting yet again from touting law and order to pushing reform.

In his remarks to Murdoch, he even allowed that “chaotic elements” are unavoidable during a reform period.

“Just to crush them--that would be a return to the past,” he said. “And that is death.”

It could be, one diplomat said, that although he is giving the republics more independence, Gorbachev has been hurt by the Bush Administration’s growing willingness to deal directly with rebellious republic leaders.

In particular, former President Richard M. Nixon wrote in a scathing essay last month after a trip to the Soviet Union that Gorbachev is leading the country into a dead-end and that Washington must forge better ties with his rivals. And Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has said that Gorbachev’s political survival appears increasingly doubtful.

“He could have just been stung by some criticism,” the diplomat, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous, said, noting Gorbachev’s complaint to Murdoch that the West insists on hastily labeling his every step a “change of course.”

The $1.5 billion in credits that Moscow is seeking to buy American farm produce is also a painful subject right now, a reflection of the growing Western tendency to put aside fond desires for the Soviet Union to flourish and take a cold, hard look at its ability to pay.

President Bush has questioned the wisdom of extending the credits to the Soviet Union when it has yet to pursue radical market reforms. Even Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, whose Kansas farmer constituents are eager to sell their produce, said last week that American grain should not be shoveled over to the Kremlin “with no questions asked.”

In the arms control arena, a disagreement over the Soviet interpretation of a treaty on conventional forces in Europe signed last year has created difficulties, and snags developed in talks on strategic arms as well.

But Bush Administration officials have not ruled out a summit meeting in Moscow early this summer, and in other areas of foreign relations, including the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, the superpower mood is definitely one of post-Cold War cooperation.

At home, too, things are looking rosier for Gorbachev now that he has signed an agreement with nine Soviet republics, populist leader Boris N. Yeltsin’s Russia among them, on emergency economic measures and the future shape of the country.