A Flowery Cultural Exchange : Television: This will be the first time in the 103-year history of the Rose Parade that Russia and the republics will be able to see the event. ‘It’s a gift of hope,’ says the producer.

Never mind meat and grain--what Russia really needs is a live telecast of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade, says arts producer Mikel Pippi. Come Jan. 1, the 44-year-old Hollywood entrepreneur is set to beam that perfumed Southern California phenomenon into as many as 180 million Russian living rooms.

The deal, which was two years in the making and involves almost a dozen players on both the Soviet and American sides, calls for the parade to be broadcast live via satellite around the time that Russian citizens sit down to their New Year’s dinners. It will be rebroadcast four days later throughout all the republics of what was the Soviet Union.

While the Rose Parade previously has been broadcast to 30 other countries, this will be the first time in its 103-year history that audiences from Minsk to Vladivostok will be able to stare in bewilderment at the cavorting drill squads, hand-waving Rose princesses and flower-festooned floats trundling down Colorado Boulevard.

To ease their cultural shock, Pippi is flying out two Soviet commentators who will narrate the parade in Russian. The duo--a well-known Soviet TV newscaster, Boris Notkin, and a movie star known as the Russian Catherine Deneuve, Irina Miroshnenko--may even make small talk, just like Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks.

“It’s a gift of hope to the Russian people,” Pippi says of his project. “The Soviet Union has been behind a wall for 70 years and I want them to know they’re part of the global family.”

Barring any new coups, bureaucratic foul-ups or acts of nature, the Rose Parade telecast will air live on Channel 3, Moscow’s commercial station, and then will be rebroadcast the following Sunday on Channel 1 or 2--which are seen throughout the republics--along with a one-hour edited version of the Rose Bowl football game, Pippi said.

Soviet experts say the parade will find a large audience in the former USSR, where it will be considered exotic and zany.

“In previous times, we had our own parades but they were not as colorful as the Do Dah and other parades you have here,” said Valentin Berezhkov, a visiting Soviet professor of political science at Pitzer College in Claremont.

Berezhkov, who founded and edits USA Magazine, a Moscow-based publication devoted to American political, economic and cultural life, says that Soviets will marvel at the sunshine and people wearing T-shirts in the middle of winter, but no more so than folks in chilly New York.

Mickey Landay, a consultant for the Russian American Cultural and Trade Assn., which advises businesses that want to invest there, adds that, “They’d rather watch that than their own shows; they’re interested in American stuff, American clothes, American everything.”

This year’s broadcast will also include commercials by a Japanese firm whose name Pippi won’t divulge, 10 public-service announcements and New Year’s greetings by American celebrities, among them Dionne Warwick.

In future years, Pippi said, he hopes to sell 40 minutes of commercial air time to American, European and Soviet firms who want to reach goods-starved consumers. For now, however, he said the project is operating in the red.

Pippi’s overhead isn’t exactly low. Besides flying out the two Soviet commentators, he is hosting an 11-member delegation from the Russian republic including Vladimir Gusev, head of St. Petersburg’s cultural affairs department, and Nina Zhukova, vice minister of culture for the Republic of Russia.

And dealing with the Soviets amid the turmoil there has been more like riding a roller coaster than gliding along on a floral float, Pippi said. Last August, he was close to wrapping up contract negotiations with Gostelradio--the state broadcasting system--when the hard-line coup was launched. Afterward, the head of the agency was fired and Pippi had to start from scratch. He says the contract was finally signed in October by the new head of Central TV and the director of the Broadcasting Channel in Moscow.

Pippi is president of International Cultural Enterprises Inc., a television production and distribution company that specializes in bringing American TV shows to the Soviet market. His American partner is Illusion Pictures Inc., a Los Angeles film production company, in association with the Moscow-based Accept Joint Stock Co., a TV agency that is working as a middleman for Gostelradio and is supposed to ensure that the transmission goes without a hitch.

Pippi, who is also vice chairman of the Los Angeles-St. Petersburg Cultural Affairs Committee, said that the Rose Parade this year will include a float by the city of Los Angeles in honor of St. Petersburg, which is the 17th sister city of Los Angeles. It will feature a 50-foot Russian sled pulled by a team of three horses crossing the frozen Neva River.

Pippi believes Russians will be delighted to see this familiar winter scene depicted with thousands of California flowers.

“The parade is a global greeting card,” Pippi says, “and I want to give them a little ray of sunshine in the middle of their very rough winter.”

Free-lance writer Loretta Schertz Keller contributed to this article.