REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Gore May Have Preferred to Get Cold Shoulder

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Imagine for a moment you are the vice president of the United States.

You have just arrived in St. Petersburg for a day of sightseeing and a little light political work after spending two days in Moscow with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and other leaders, trying to contain the damage from a disastrous showing in last Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

The last thing you are prepared for is a man wearing only a lunatic grin and a tiny blue Speedo trying to break a hole in the ice of the Neva River to go for a little swim in 25-degree weather.

That was the situation for Al Gore on Friday after he toured a czarist prison and was escorted out onto a jetty.

Gore and his wife, Tipper, encountered Victor Lapitzky, a hearty St. Petersburg resident who apparently believes in ice water as a human preservative, stripping down to little more than a G-string for his morning treatment.

Gore, wearing full Washington regalia of charcoal pin-stripes and red tie, stood characteristically stiff and speechless before turning to his interpreter to say, “Ask him how old he is.”

Lapitzky, his face frozen into a toothy grimace as he shifted from foot to foot on the frozen concrete pier, replied, “Thirty-seven.”

The vice president, always ready with a witty reply, said to his interpreter, “Tell him he doesn’t look a day over 36.”

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Later Friday, Gore appeared before 800 St. Petersburg students, politicians and business leaders to conduct a town hall meeting on the transition to democracy in Russia.

The affair was held in the grand Tavrichesky Palace, the seat of Russia’s first popularly elected Parliament, which went by the same name as the new lower house of Parliament--the Duma.

That body was disbanded by V. I. Lenin’s gunmen in 1918, ending the democratic experiment in Russia for more than 70 years. The meeting featured Gore working the room with a wireless microphone like a sedated Phil Donahue. It started with a lively debate over Russia’s new constitution, with some expressing the opinion that it gives Yeltsin too much power, while others said Russia needs a period of autocratic rule before it can complete its journey toward full democracy.

Gore tried to stay neutral, merely restating the Clinton Administration’s policy of supporting Yeltsin as the most viable path toward reform.

One woman said of the new constitution: “I think it is very dangerous, because Yeltsin is one thing, but suppose a fascist comes to power.”

A man in the audience responded, “We need American investment, but investment will happen only if there is stability, and stability will come only through strong presidential power.”

The session seemed to delight the audience.

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Earlier in the week, Gore toured the Russian Space Agency’s mission control center near Moscow for some banter with two cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station.

As the two cosmonauts--who had been in space for 166 days--waited for Gore’s telephone hookup, they played with a large wrench floating weightlessly by.

They had faraway looks in their eyes, like men who have been in space for nearly six months. Gore attempted some humorous chitchat, in his inimitable style, but the men’s looks seemed to say, “Can we come home now?”

Gore tried to end the conversation several times, but the spacemen kept talking, clinging to the human contact. Finally, Gore wished the space explorers good luck and signed off, but not until one of the cosmonauts pulled off his oversized spacesuit glove to give to Gore as a gift.

Maybe he hoped the vice president would fly up and take his place in the rest of the suit.