‘It’s Been an Emotional Roller Coaster’ : Families: Perhaps it’s a matter of national pride. But Russia’s decision to curb adoptions to the West has left potential parents in a state of turmoil.

If all goes well, Katherine Elena Roderick will get parents for Christmas.

A toddler from Siberia with eyes that remind her mother-to-be of Elizabeth Taylor’s, she could also be one of the last Russian children to be adopted by Americans for some time.

Although recent news stories predicting a Dec. 1 suspension of foreign adoptions proved incorrect, Russia is expected to enact a law that could reduce substantially, if not stanch for months, the stream of children who have become some of the former Soviet Union’s most sought-after exports to the West.

More than 3,000 Russian children have been adopted by Americans since the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991; more than half of them in the year that ended Sept. 30, according to State Department figures. Taken together, the former Soviet republics have edged out South Korea as the primary foreign source for American adoptions.

For an estimated 1,000 Americans currently trying to adopt Russians--and perhaps many more who have been contemplating such a step--this is a time of high anxiety.

“I’d have to say it’s been an emotional roller coaster,” said Debby Zielinski of Old Forge, Pa.

She and her husband already suffered bitter disappointment when, after being matched with an 18-month-old boy in Crimea, the government in that semiautonomous region slapped a moratorium on foreign adoptions in July.

Now the Zielinskis have chosen another boy, from Moscow, and have been told by their adoption agency to be ready to travel in a few weeks.

Since the lower house of the Russian parliament passed the adoption law Nov. 18 (it must still pass the upper house and be signed by President Boris Yeltsin to take effect), American agencies have been trying to expedite cases already in the pipeline.

“I am trying to send as many people to Russia as I possibly can,” said Larisa Mason, head of the International Assistance Group in Pittsburgh, which has arranged 125 Russian adoptions and is handling more than 100 now.

Paula and John Roderick left Thursday on a grueling journey to an orphanage in Birobidzhan in Russia’s remote northeast. There they hope to claim the girl to whose birth name, Elena, they have already added another, Katherine.

Interviewed before their departure, Paula Roderick expressed confidence that they would have the 14-month-old girl in their suburban Alexandria, Va., home for the holidays.

From the time the adoption agency showed us “one little bitty picture, a color Xerox of a Polaroid . . . she’s been our daughter,” Roderick said. “She looks like she has Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes. Her eyes are so blue they’re almost violet.

“We didn’t pick her. God did. Becoming a parent is a leap of faith to begin with, whether the child is biological or adoptive.”

Faith, optimism, patience and a certain fatalism were expressed by nearly a dozen prospective parents interviewed as they waited in limbo for final approvals in both countries.

For most, the new uncertainties of Russian adoption seemed far outweighed by the ordeals they had already suffered trying to conceive children or adopt in the United States.

One California woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she wanted a Russian child so she could “refocus the love” she had given to a daughter who died of E. coli infection during the bacteria outbreak two years ago.

“Nothing in life will ever set me back so much again,” she said. “If this adoption is meant to happen, it will happen. I can offer this (Russian) child so much and this child can offer us so much.”

Of about 60,000 adoptions by Americans in the year ending in September, about 14% (8,195) were from foreign countries, according to the State Department.

But foreign children accounted for nearly 17% of adoptions of children younger than 2, estimated William Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption, an advocacy group based in Washington.

Americans are turning to foreign countries to avoid long waits in this country, opposition to interracial adoption, and the fear that biological parents may change their minds and demand their children back.

For single parents, gay couples and those older than 40, adoption agency officials added, a foreign adoption is often the only kind possible.

Since the fall of Communism, Americans have been drawn to Russia and other Eastern European countries because of the numbers of white children living in orphanages, often in dire conditions.

But what looks like love and altruism from an American perspective often appears quite different in countries that not long ago saw themselves as equal in stature to the West.

“Any time we identify the No. 1 country sending kids to the United States, it immediately becomes a matter of national disgrace for that country,” Pierce said.

There have been backlashes against American adoptions in Romania, which in 1991 sent more than 2,500 children to the United States, and in South and Central America. In Guatemala, villagers, outraged by rumors of baby-selling for organ transplants, bludgeoned a 51-year-old Alaskan woman into a coma earlier this year.

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Nothing so grim has happened in Russia, but nationalistic feelings have risen, along with anger at the large sums of money--up to $25,000--Americans are willing to spend to take home Russian kids.

While most of the money goes for legitimate expenses and gifts to orphanages, Russian middlemen, or “facilitators” as they are known, have been caught paying bribes and forging documents.

The new Russian law is intended to curtail abuses by transferring decision-making powers from orphanage directors and local officials to a central agency equipped with a computer data base of all children available for adoption.

But with more than 200,000 children in institutions and a faltering economy, many wonder whether Russia can create such a system.

“They don’t even have fax machines or adequate food,” said Linda Crumpecker, the adoptive mother of a Russian boy and the chairman of Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption, a Washington-based support group with 250 members.

If the law is passed, “there could be a substantial delay” in adoptions, said Mason, who is encouraging new clients to consider children from other former Soviet republics, such as Uzbekistan. “Nobody knows how the law will work because no structure is in place to make it work.”

Janice Pearse, director of Adoptions Together, a Baltimore, Md., agency that has placed more than 100 children from the former Soviet Union, said it was unclear whether Moscow and some other areas might be excluded from the central organization.

“We’ve had many calls from our waiting families asking whether they should switch programs. We have encouraged them to hang in there,” she said.

A State Department recording ((202) 647-3444) advises Americans that adoptions could be suspended for as long as eight months once the law is enacted. It cautions parents to “be sure their cases will be allowed to be processed to completion” before traveling to Russia.

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An earlier advisory from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow predicting a Dec. 1 suspension of adoptions caused a furor in the adoption community.

“We think the U.S. Embassy jumped the gun in its efforts to protect families and caused immeasurable anxiety for thousands of people,” said Linda Perilstein, executive director of Cradle of Hope, a Washington agency that has arranged 320 Russian adoptions and is currently handling 30.

Meanwhile, her clients are trying to stay calm.

“We’re stuck in the middle right now,” said Kathy Locraft of Herndon, Va. “The State Department tells me one thing, the agency tells me another.

“It helps that we had to deal with the bureaucracy there and here before,” said Locraft, who has a 5-year-old adopted from the Ukraine as well as a biological child of 7.

For the Rodericks, Katherine Elena would be their first child.

“I’m 44 years old and my husband will be 50 in January,” Paula Roderick said. “It’s hard to believe after you try for so long and have so many disappointments and heartbreaks. You’re almost afraid to hope. Then all of a sudden you see the picture of your child.”