A Small Triumph for <i> Glasnost</i> : Soviet Book Exhibit Finally Attracts Some Attention Here

Los Angeles seems to have edged out Boston in the East-West book race.

This is the assessment of Evgueny G. Semenikhin--deputy chief of the international relations department of the USSR State Committee for Publishing, Printing and Book Trade--on a mission of glasnost into the heart of Hollywood.

Semenikhin, here through Friday with a traveling exhibition of Soviet books at UCLA’s Powell Library, said Tuesday that attendance at the exhibit apparently “has been the best” on the three-city tour. The turnout here appeared to have ameliorated Semenikhin’s earlier questions about why the show, part of a reciprocal arrangement with the U.S. government, was greeted with so little fanfare in Boston, Washington, D.C., and here.

“In Boston, for instance, I traveled a lot around the city,” he said in an interview when the show opened last week. “I didn’t see a single poster.”

In the Soviet Union, the American counterpart of the book show “was on TV. It was on radio and all the cities were glued with posters,” Semenikhin maintained as he sat in the library’s rotunda behind a table covered with bright brochures on Soviet offerings in literature, history and science.

In the Soviet Union, an exhibit of 1,000 recently published American books toured the cities of Novosibirsk, Minsk and Tbilisi, where it ended Monday. The Soviet exhibit was sponsored locally by the International Visitors Council of Los Angeles in cooperation with the UCLA library.

On opening day last week, Semenikhin’s dissatisfaction prompted Robert McLaughlin, the United States Information Agency officer assigned to the exhibit, to respond.

“The American book show went to Siberian cities, and there is just so much competition in this city and Boston and Washington for other things, conflicting cultural events,” McLaughlin interjected. “I mean, it’s just bewildering the number of things to try to go to, while there may be fewer things to go to in Novosibirsk, or whatever.” (Actually, Tbilisi and Minsk are not in Siberia.)

This low-key exchange did not, however, signal the beginning of a culture war between the two superpowers.

Semenikhin stated that “we are absolutely satisfied with the mere fact of this book exchange because we consider it to be one of the practical implementations of Soviet-American dialogue.” And he noted that next year the dialogue will continue when a children’s book exhibit visits U.S. cities.

While McLaughlin said the tour is going “very well” from the information agency’s perspective, he expressed the diplomatic equivalent of shared pain. “I must say I am disappointed because my friend (Semenikhin) is disappointed.”

McLaughlin and Semenikhin disagreed mildly on whether the turnout in Boston last month was good or mediocre, but both agreed that attendance in Washington in late September was less than stellar. In both cities the exhibit was on display for 11 days.

On its first day at UCLA, the exhibit of 1,000 Soviet books seemed to attract mainly small numbers of curious students who spent a few minutes browsing through the display of books--about 350 in English, the rest in Russian. The selection is eclectic, ranging from “The Historical Experience of the Three Russian Revolutions” to “About Quantum Electronics” to a nature book titled “The Altai Mountains of Kazakhstan” as well as novels and children’s books.

On succeeding days, however, Semenikhin said many students stopped to chat with members of the Soviet delegation. When they asked political questions, they got political answers, he said. He added that the delegation had met many UCLA scholars and had been invited to lecture classes, including one in Slavic studies.

Semenikhin conceded the collection he accompanied contained few books published during the new era of glasnost , or openness, but he said it’s a bit early yet to look for such results in hardcovers. Thus far, the rethinking of the Soviet past--particularly of the Stalin era--has taken place mainly in magazines and newspapers, he said.

Semenikhin noted, however, that “Children of the Arbat,” a ground-breaking novel about the Stalin period that has been published in both the United States and the Soviet Union, was brought along on the tour.

Reporters were given a printed statement from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that said in part, “In our time of satellite communication and computer information, of broadcasting and television, a book keeps all its force of impact on human minds and feelings and plays an important role in mutual human communications.”

Perhaps surprisingly, a priest of the Russian Orthodox church--Aleksiy Kirillov--is traveling with the Soviet delegation and exhibiting a sampling of books from the publishing arm of the Moscow Patriarchate. The choice of books published by the church includes a multiple volume, “The Lives of the Saints,” and a special edition of the Bible. The religious section also includes books such as “Folklore in the Old Testament” and “The History of the Russian Orthodox Church” that were not published by the church.

Said Semenikhin: “Father Aleksiy is not a part of our team, he is absolutely by himself. We simply provided them (the church) with some (book) stands and he is absolutely by himself.”

Meanwhile, Kirillov, on his second trip to the United States, said he has been getting a startled reaction from the American public.

“They were surprised that religion exists in the Soviet Union, perhaps because of lack of information,” he said.