COLUMN ONE : Now It’s a ‘Cool War’ Over Visas : Russians seeking U.S. travel papers complain of embassy’s rudeness and a bureaucratic ‘Iron Curtain.’ Americans counter with stories of Soviet-style red tape. Friction may strain developing ties.

“Come quickly to New York. Our mother is on the verge of dying,” read the fax to 59-year-old professor Georgy Grigorenko. “A brain hemorrhage has left her in a coma, and the doctors say she has only a few days left.”

Fax in hand, Grigorenko, whose late father was one of the most heroic of Soviet dissidents, rushed recently to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for a visa.

There, as he recalls, a consular official behind a glass window asked him his profession (professor), how much he earned (about $40 a month), how much his wife earned (the same) and who would cover his expenses (his brother in New York).

Then the official said: “Sir, I reject you. First of all, because you’ve never been to America and it’s hard to be sure you’ll come back. Secondly, because you earn too little, and thirdly, because you have too many relatives in the United States.”

The incident was not unique. And though Grigorenko later got an apology and a visa in time for his mother’s funeral, the embassy’s attitude toward the case fired such outrage in President Boris N. Yeltsin’s human rights chief that he picketed the building, then swore never to set foot there again.

“The (visitors’ visa) system is absolutely unjust,” said Sergei Kovalev, a comrade of the late Nobel laureate Andrei D. Sakharov and now Russia’s main voice of conscience. “To insult the dignity of every person who wants to travel to New York or Los Angeles is simply not permissible. And to limit them in that right is not permissible.”

But it happens often. In contrast to the beefy warm embraces exchanged by their presidents, Russia and the United States remain cool to each other when it comes to letting in visitors.

The Cold War is over and the White House is pushing American investment in Russia. But travel between the countries, now reaching a brisk traffic of more than 100,000 visits each way annually, remains rife with rancor and bureaucratic barriers.

American officials defend their procedures here as conforming to U.S. consular practices around the globe and with U.S. laws.

But in Moscow, Russians’ complaints that U.S. consular officials humiliate them and hold up their visas arbitrarily have reached the point that the leading daily Izvestia carried a blistering piece on “The manners of U.S. consular workers in Moscow.” Human rights groups issue public protests and Russian diplomats asked about the problem lose their diplomatic restraint.

“The Iron Curtain that came down has now been put up from the other side,” fumed Vasily Vinogradov, chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s consular service. “For a citizen who wants to leave, it’s the same Iron Curtain. Before, he clashed with our Soviet bureaucracy and totalitarianism. Now he clashes with Western bureaucracy and totalitarianism.”

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Americans, for their part, often get a nasty dose of Soviet-style red tape when they try to obtain visas they need to go to Russia--including embassy workers who slam down phones on information-seekers.

But there is a cultural difference, especially given the U.S. Embassy system of trying to decide in an interview of five minutes or less whether a would-be visitor will stay on illegally.

Americans get annoyed; Russians get insulted.

Those very Russians acknowledge that the United States must protect itself against bad foreigners. They can see that the Moscow consular section is struggling under a backbreaking workload, issuing more than 500 visas per day and guaranteeing same-day service to all. And all in all, the U.S. Embassy turns down only about 20% of applicants for guest and business visas--for which applicants are charged a $20 fee--giving Russians far better odds than their neighbors in Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

But the visa procedures nonetheless evoke a supercharged emotional response--a mix of hurt superpower pride, the accumulated outrage of decades of repression, shattered illusions about America and quashed hopes of truly free travel at last.

“I don’t want to think this, but they seem to want to demonstrate that they consider me scum,” said Lera, a psychologist whose first visa application was denied. “We’re prepared to be checked, submit documents and all necessary information, but you have to do it in a civilized way.”

Visa problems also tend to inhibit development of the very U.S.-Russian business partnership that both presidents expend so much breath touting. Russian officials commented that it is as if one arm of government promotes cooperation while the other writes visa rules, and the two never talk.

“They make business unpredictable,” the head of a small New York-based telecommunications company said. “What do we do if we have a Russian subsidiary that does 95% of our business, and we can’t summon its general director when we need him?”

The historical irony of Russians’ visa travails is inescapable. The United States was a top critic of Soviet travel restrictions in the old Cold War days, and Congress linked tariffs on Soviet goods to free emigration of Soviet Jews.

Now, with American public opinion leaning toward get-tough rules on illegal immigration, many Russians are finding that Moscow no longer brands them “no exit” but Washington considers them “no entry.”

They are the new refuseniks, and Moscow human rights groups protest their plight just as they used to defend Jews and others refused exit visas.

But America’s push for freer Soviet travel “didn’t mean that each country had to receive the people of the sending nation,” said a U.S. Embassy official, who, following protocol, declined to be identified. “It just meant that you should be able to travel freely.”

Each country has the sovereign right to decide its own rules for letting in foreign nationals, another U.S. Embassy official said, and international human rights treaties guarantee a person’s right to leave his country and return to it, but not to go absolutely anywhere he wants.

The United States is far from alone in its cool welcome to would-be Russian visitors. Complaints abound from applicants for Canadian, British and other visas; it takes 40 days here to get an Italian visa; would-be visitors to Germany can wait for up to six months.

In comparison, the American system of same-day service, even if it means getting in line at 7 a.m., looks almost idyllic. And although visa applicants may freeze for hours in line, and some of the processing is done in cramped, no-frills quarters, the physical conditions draw only expressions of light surprise that the richest country in the world cannot present a better face. In any case, a $40,000 remodeling for the consular section is planned soon.

The real problems, however, arise when an applicant approaches a consular official behind a glass window for “the interview.” Many of the suspicious questions posed by harried workers come across as horribly rude, said more than a dozen Russians interviewed.

When Mikhail, a businessman who heads the Russian subsidiary of the New York-based telecommunications company, presented his invitation to America from his parent company, the consular clerk snapped: “How do I know you didn’t just buy this on the street outside the embassy for $100?”

The American chief of an aid program in Moscow said when she has gone in to help Russian employees get visas for business trips to America, consular officials “treated me as rudely as if I was a criminal.”

American officials say they believe no consular employees have been reprimanded for their manners and dismiss many of the Russian complaints as coming from “a culture clash.” One senior official quipped that Russians “should be connoisseurs of rudeness.”

To Kovalev, however, consular officials’ behavior is not to be accepted so lightly. One of the most respected people in Russia and a member of Yeltsin’s administration, he said he was dismissed by a vice consul whom he had called about the Grigorenko case with the words: “I don’t have time to chatter with you.”

“The arrogance, self-importance and stupidity of these people are simply amazing. How can you have such workers in an embassy so important to America?” Kovalev wondered. “They came here as if to a country populated with savages.”

Kovalev said he was also appalled by consular officials’ ignorance of Soviet history. He compared not knowing about Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko, a courageous human rights advocate who was tortured in a psychiatric prison and ultimately expelled from the Soviet Union, to a Russian working in America who never had heard of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Even when the interview goes smoothly, the fact that it is required about half the time brings Russian Foreign Ministry officials to the point of tearing their hair. It is they who must take the flak when the embassy refuses to take the ministry’s word that an applicant is a Russian bigwig and should not be required to appear.

Vinogradov said the vice president of Gazprom, the giant Russian gas company worth billions, was required to appear for an interview; a mini-scandal arose this summer when a Foreign Ministry diplomat was called in. The embassy later said that case was an error.

“I always bring the example of what would happen if we started calling in (former Chrysler Chairman) Lee Iacocca for an interview and asked him to explain what his salary is and to prove that he wants to return to the United States,” Vinogradov said.

The Russian officials argue that when the U.S. Embassy offends important Russians right and left, it is playing into the hands of anti-Western political forces that would rather see Russia proud than at peace. Some say they are also turning off America’s greatest natural supporters here--the enterprising young New Russians.

“It becomes a political question, for President Yeltsin and for the government and for our ministry,” Vinogradov said. “We try to explain to our colleagues: ‘What are you doing? You’re weakening the position of the government you support.’ ”

For consular workers, however, the issue is mainly practical. According to an informal survey they made, 15% to 20% of Russians who go to the United States on guest or business visas overstay. They are also concerned about the growing Russian organized crime presence in the United States and are required by U.S. law to assume would-be visitors intend to stay illegally unless they can prove otherwise.

Unlike many European countries that require foreigners to register with police, the United States has no good means to keep track of Russian visitors once they land. “Once you’re through the point of entry, it’s over,” the embassy official said. “The point of no return is us. It forces us to be the heavies.”

Still, the official said, “We keep trying to figure out, within the constraints of limited space and so many applications, what we can do to make this clearer, easier, nicer.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry suggests that the consulate shift to a system of invitations, placing more responsibility on Americans who invite Russians and perhaps even fining hosts of guests who overstay.

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But embassy officials say figuring out who had overstayed would involve hiring hordes of new immigration officers to check the 22 million foreigners who visit the United States annually as they leave or track them down.

Instead, they are working to whittle the number of Russian visa applicants who must undergo the interview. They also hope to farm out some of the visa process to selected travel agents.

Meanwhile, the consulate is likely to keep alienating Russian visitors before they can even get on the plane. Or keeping them off the plane altogether.

Sergei, a Moscow professional who got a visa for his son to attend a U.S. summer camp, said the experience made him decide against going to visit himself. “I just don’t want to go through another humiliation,” he said. “I’d rather go without America.”