THE FLOWERING OF SOVIET ‘SPOKESMEN’

War and peace.

“They’re all over the place,” Cable News Network’s Stuart Loory said about the throng of Soviets available to Western media for last week’s Geneva summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Loory, CNN’s able Moscow correspondent, was one of 3,000 media members in Switzerland for the summit, where Soviet spokesmen were nearly as available as hookers on the Sunset Strip.

“The first day I got here, I called the Soviet mission to talk to a friend,” Loory said from Geneva. “He wasn’t there, but the man on the phone asked: ‘Want an interview?’ ”

Despite a news blackout after the first Reagan/Gorbachev meeting, the accessibility of Soviets for Geneva’s media carnival seemed astounding in light of the Soviet Union’s traditional secrecy. The Soviet press, after all, is a tightly controlled arm of the state.

Not that the Soviets were exactly spilling over with inside scoops in Geneva. In fact, they were generally more available than forthcoming, long on doctrinaire rhetoric, short on candor. “But I can safely say there has been as much openness by the Soviets as by the U.S.,” Loory said.

How abundant were the Soviets?

The networks’ morning, Sunday interview and evening news programs hosted such generally unknown and unpronounceable names as Georgy A. Arbatov, Alexander Shalnev, Yevgeny P. Velikhov, Vladimir B. Lomeiko, Sergei Plekhanov and Roald Sagdeev.

Hence, the confusing verbal pollution of the Soviets was added to that of the U.S. government and the media in Geneva. “But it works for them,” Loory said about the Kremlin. “They are getting a lot of press. Everyone is talking about the new openness of the Soviets.”

There was even more of that when Gorbachev held a Western-style press conference Thursday, and when Americanologists Arbatov and Plekhanov and space expert Sagdeev appeared via satellite on Friday’s “Nightline,” where they were questioned by U.S. Congress members.

Actually, the “new openness” didn’t begin with the Geneva summit or even with Gorbachev, although the Communist Party’s first secretary has dramatically altered Kremlin style since assuming leadership eight months ago.

As far back as 1981, Loory and CNN began doing weekly satellite interviews with top party officials. “But the actual thaw began about a year ago,” Loory said, “when the Soviets began holding regular briefings for Western correspondents. Now they do it once a week, all on the record.”

These breakthrough yet unnewsy briefings are tied to specific subjects. “The Soviets give you a chance to ask questions about the Sakharovs, human rights and things like that,” Loory said, “questions which they never answer.”

Another pre-Geneva turning point in Soviet “openness” came at last summer’s 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. While America’s Helsinki delegation, led by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, gave media briefings in Helsinki only for background, Loory said, the Soviets were at a hotel across the street holding open press conferences that “completely upstaged the U.S.”

Then in early October, Gorbachev endured an unprecedented Paris press conference that exposed him to aggressive questioning on human rights-related issues.

Within the last year, meanwhile, NBC’s “Today” spent a week in the Soviet Union and ABC’s “Good Morning America” was allowed to send in David Hartman for a candid and comprehensive series of reports aired throughout the summit. This modified Soviet approach in dealing with Western media has not occurred in a vacuum.

NBC’s coming miniseries “Peter the Great” was shot in Moscow and Leningrad earlier this year, making NBC the first American network to be allowed to make a TV drama inside the Soviet Union.

Then last May, politically conservative Ted Turner (owner of CNN and cable superstation WTBS), concluded a two-year “agreement of cooperation” with state-run Soviet broadcasting. They will exchange programming and jointly produce both a six-hour TV documentary on the Soviet Union and a two-week mini-Olympics in Moscow this July known as the Goodwill Games.

The athletic event--featuring the type of competition between Soviet Bloc and American athletes preempted by the Soviet-led boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984--will be shown on WTBS.

On another front, a recent PBS-run program gave Soviet journalists in Washington and American journalists in Moscow a limited opportunity to exchange views via satellite, although the effort was somewhat sabotaged by the stridency of American moderator Howard K. Smith.

Coming next month, meanwhile, are two more TV programs that will electronically link Soviets and Americans, the first of these a Soviet co-production involving children from both nations. Moderated by Kremlin spokesman Vladimir Posner in the Soviet Union and singer John Denver in Minneapolis, it will air on WCCO-TV in Minneapolis Dec. 2 and be available to PBS stations three days later.

Then on Dec. 29, a two-hour syndicated program will join an American studio audience in Seattle with a Soviet studio audience in Leningrad via satellite. Phil Donahue and Posner will co-moderate the co-production of Soviet TV and KING-TV in Seattle.

Strange happenings.

Taken together, do all these incidents signify a pattern of fundamental change in Kremlin attitudes? Or are they merely an extension of the traditional Soviet policy of turning a softer cheek toward the West until a new leader’s power is consolidated?

Whether these tiny islands of Soviet “openness” lead to real communication remains to be seen. For the time being, though, the global bridge continues to widen.