REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Clinton a Glass Act as Vodka Flows

A leader needs intestinal fortitude for the hard work of summits, and perhaps fortitude of the liver as well.

President Clinton has the endurance of a draft animal when it comes to doing without sleep, but this jaunt to Eastern Europe is also testing his ability to absorb vodka in a region where real men are expected to down it by the glass.

In the diplomatic equivalent of a drop-by in Kiev on Wednesday night, Clinton politely matched Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk belt-for-several-belts. On Thursday night, he moved on to Moscow, where the schedule called for a “working dinner” with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin that threatened to turn into a “drinking dinner,” one aide joked.

Aides insisted Clinton could take it, but when he arrived in Moscow in the wee hours of Thursday after his session with Kravchuk, the President headed for a restorative session in the sauna. Hours later, in his first encounter with Yeltsin at the Kremlin, Clinton--who had only about three hours’ sleep--was “a little bleary,” the official conceded.

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In their first day in Moscow, the Americans traveling with Clinton witnessed a bit of the casual attitude toward work that challenges Russian efforts to develop a free-market economy.

A shuttle bus had been set up to relay White House staff and press between the two hotels where they are quartered, but it was largely put out of action by drivers whose labors seemed to be guided more by their whims than their instructions. Coffee and lunch breaks, not to mention the disco music playing in one hotel, seemed to consume most of their time.

One driver had installed a portable television set beside the steering wheel and couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from a soap opera as he piloted his lumbering vehicle across the traffic-choked and ice-slick boulevards.

Yet there were also signs of stirring capitalist initiative. Moscow’s IPCC-M Bar and Grill joined a number of taverns in the formerly Communist and free worlds that have tried the marketing gimmick of inviting Clinton to play his saxophone on their premises. It doesn’t always work, of course, but it can be counted on to generate attention. “Isn’t it time you blew off a little steam?” the cafe asked Clinton, and music lovers, in a flyer.

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They have lost their savings, their incomes and some even their homes. But in this winter of hardship, Russians will have bananas. Or at least pieces of bananas. Chiquita Brands International Inc. is handing out 10 million of its bananas in this depressed nation. That’s only one for every 17 Russians, but the company plans to concentrate its effort by giving them to Muscovite children, hospital patients and the poor. At a promotional cocktail party, State Department officials and press ate bananas and mingled with young Russian women wearing Carmen Miranda-style, plastic-fruit headgear.

The project taught the company a lesson about Russian power structure that might be useful to Clinton as he tries to cultivate Yeltsin. Chiquita first approached officials of the national government to arrange the gift, but then switched the effort when city officials told them there was no point. “Why mess with them?” a city official asked. “They have no money, no power.”

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A Moscow supper club owned by a New Yorker ran an ad in the English-language Moscow Times on the eve of Clinton’s arrival listing the “Top 10 Reasons Bill Clinton Should Eat at Manhattan Express.” Aside from reason No. 9 (“Neil Bush was here so we need a bigger Democrat to tip the scales the right way”), there were many references to the President’s second priority on his Moscow trip: food.

“10. We are closer to the Kremlin than McDonald’s.”

“8. Pizza Hut only allows one trip to the salad bar.”

“5. We’ll send out for jelly doughnuts.”

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There was also a lot of talk in the Russian papers about where Clinton would sleep and change clothes during his three nights in the Russian capital. His decision to spend the first two nights in the American-run Radisson Slavjanskaya Hotel instead of at Spaso House prompted the Itar-Tass headline: “Clinton Prefers Flashy Hotel to Ambassador’s Residence.” The Itar-Tass reporter was miffed when hotel authorities would not tell him what floor Clinton’s $800-a-night suite was on.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus and Steven Gutterman of the Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.