CRISIS IN THE KREMLIN : Computers Help U.S. Firms Track Coup : Technology: A San Francisco company set up electronic mail service between America and the Soviet Union in 1985.

Messages flashing on the Macintosh computer screens at the offices of San Francisco/Moscow Teleport tell of tanks rumbling through Moscow and crowds massed in the streets shouting support for Boris Yeltsin and other opponents of the right-wing coup.

“We are ready to give the hunta (sic) an airplane so they would fly away from our country,” one politician is quoted as telling the gathering.

As the remarkable political events unfold in Moscow, electronic mail has flowed nonstop between Teleport’s information-hungry subscribers in the United States and the Soviet Union.

Using a personal computer and a modem, individuals and companies have maintained a steady, low-cost satellite link with business partners, families and friends.

“People were on-line all night long,” Diane Schatz, the wife of Teleport’s founder, said Tuesday at the company’s offices in the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. “The usage was incredible.”

Indeed, the Soviet crisis has created a mini-boom for U.S. businesses that provide electronic links between the two nations.

Subscribers--which include businesses, schools, universities, research centers, trading companies, government agencies and cultural groups--typically pay a monthly fee plus usage fees. Primarily, the networks provide electronic mail services that make it possible to exchange messages between the United States and the Soviet Union, where conventional telephone communications are spotty at best.

U.S. Sprint Communications, based in Kansas City, Mo., is the latest firm to offer such services, mainly to large multinational companies and Soviet trading firms. Its partner, the Soviet Ministry of Communications, has “pledged its support to let us stay” in business, said spokesman Vincent Hovanec in Washington.

And CompuServe, an on-line information service in Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday set aside a portion of its network to provide members with news and messages about the Soviet crisis. In addition to sending E-mail, users may read continually updated news accounts and exchange views on how the coup affects international relations and financial markets.

Reading from the screen in her office, spokeswoman Debra Young relayed the greetings from Moscow of a high-tech company executive.

“As you can imagine, sales are a little slow right now, but all of our employees are at work carrying on as usual,” he wrote. “Yesterday, we drove around Moscow, counting tanks and armored personnel carriers. In general, the situation is very calm. . . . Our general impression is that the guys who started this coup don’t have the stomach to really make it stick.”

In a later message, the man described the lunchtime scene in Moscow as somewhat festive, with “kids and tourists up on tanks . . . and (shopkeepers) handing out free ice cream to the troops. Very peaceful--very relaxed.”

That such information now flows from--as well as to--the Soviet Union is largely a testament to Teleport founder Joel Schatz, who in 1983 set about figuring how to improve U.S.-Soviet communications.

At the time, relations between the two countries were icy. Earlier that year, President Ronald Reagan had denounced the Soviet nation as “an evil empire.” In September, 1983, while the Schatzes were visiting the Soviet Union, the Soviets shot down a Korean Airlines jet, killing 269 people. The act outraged other nations.

In 1985, Schatz started San Francisco/Moscow Teleport as a nonprofit company. It now is a for-profit operation, with backing from two New York money managers, George Soros and Alan B. Slifka.

Teleport has 600 users, including 200 in the Soviet Union. It claims to handle 99% of the E-mail coming from the Soviet side.

During the past two years, the company has launched two U.S.-Soviet joint ventures.

Sovam Teleport offers database, electronic mail and teleconferencing services via satellite in partnership with the Moscow-based Institute for Automated Services.

Sovintel, a high-tech, high-volume telephone service, is scheduled to be available in Moscow hotel rooms and business centers this fall. Partners in that venture are GTE Spacenet International and the Soviet Ministry of Communications.

Tania Heifets, a former Soviet Jewish “refusenik” now working for Teleport in San Francisco, described the Schatzes’ effort as “citizen diplomacy that created the first link” with the Soviet people.

As it turns out, Joel Schatz and another Teleport executive are in the Soviet Union attempting to finalize some other joint ventures in various Soviet republics. His wife said she heard from him Tuesday morning that “everything’s normal, as if nothing is happening.”

She too is scheduled to travel to the Soviet Union in a week. As things stand, she intends to go.