NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. Holds Out Against the Soviet Clamor for Aid : Assistance: Kremlin wants fewer lectures, more cash. Bush wants faster moves toward a free market.

Beneath a portrait of Soviet founder V. I. Lenin, in a dusty auditorium in the headquarters of the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan last Monday lectured a roomful of Ukrainian government officials--mostly former Communists--on the joys of capitalism and free-market farming.

“We will help you, but the key to your reform is the development of markets and the liberalization of prices,” Madigan told them.

The Ukrainian officials listened politely--then got to the point. When, asked Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachenko, would the United States lend them some money?

As winter approaches and food shortages worsen across the Soviet Union, the Bush Administration finds itself increasingly under the gun to take the lead in providing emergency food assistance to the Soviets. But as Madigan’s frustrating experience in Kiev shows, U.S. and Soviet officials often find themselves talking past one another when it comes to economic and agricultural assistance.

For its part, the Bush Administration wants to use its role as a leading food provider to prod the Soviets into moving more rapidly toward a free market. But the Soviets, confronted with extraordinary political upheaval and a disastrous economic collapse, apparently want fewer lectures and more cash.

The Soviets have reportedly told the Western industrial powers they need $10.2 billion in emergency assistance--with much of that coming from the United States. Soviet officials have warned of social unrest and even chaos this winter if the West doesn’t come to their aid.

Western Europe, eager to keep the Soviets afloat to avoid a massive influx of refugees, has moved quickly to help. The European Community announced $1.5 billion in new emergency food assistance earlier this week. More surprisingly, Japan also announced $2.5 billion in loan guarantees for Soviet purchases of food and medicine.

But the White House has not yet announced its aid package, and President Bush still seems determined not to give in to mounting calls from the Soviets for a huge U.S. taxpayer-funded bailout. Administration officials have made it clear that U.S. aid will not come anywhere close to $10 billion.

In fact, Madigan and other U.S. officials have repeatedly sought to play down reports of worsening food shortages in some regions of the country in hopes of reducing the pressure on Washington to make a grand--and expensive--gesture.

Just before leaving Moscow on Wednesday after a nine-day Soviet tour, Madigan asserted again that he does not believe there will be a famine this winter. And earlier in the week on a visit to St. Petersburg, Madigan dismissed reports that a bread-buying panic had gripped the Soviet Union’s second-largest city. “The local officials tell me it (the bread shortage) is not a problem,” insisted Madigan. “They say this is just temporary.”

To be sure, the United States remains committed to providing some emergency help this winter. On Wednesday, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev presented Madigan with a detailed wish list that was not made public; the Administration did not formally respond.

But Madigan still publicly assured Moscow that the White House will go well beyond the $1.5 billion in credits and loan guarantees for purchases of U.S. grain granted to the Soviets this summer. And, to avoid getting enmeshed in the inter-republic rivalries that now grip the Soviet Union, the food aid will be sent directly to the central government. The most significant part of the U.S. aid will be bulk shipments of soybeans, corn and other grains.

Soviet officials have told the Administration that their biggest problem is a shortage of such grains to feed animals; that shortage could prompt farmers to accelerate the slaughter of cattle and hogs this fall, which would then leave Soviet cities short of meat later in the winter. That grain would have to be shipped by large cargo ships through ocean ports, and so U.S. officials believe that the central government, rather than the republics, will have to be in charge of the logistics.

The Administration is also willing to provide technical assistance for the crumbling Soviet agricultural economy and even has some novel ideas about how to do that. Madigan hopes to create a working American farm--with a real American farmer running it--outside St. Petersburg; he and Gorbachev tentatively agreed on a proposal to have American agribusiness executives take over the management of Soviet food-processing facilities.

Yet the Administration is still resisting proposals for more costly forms of assistance. “We don’t think they will need a big handout because we don’t think things are going to get that bad,” said one U.S. official here. “We have more information than ever before, and we just don’t see people falling over in the streets from hunger.”