Plus Ca Change

By WALTER ISAACSON

Ronald Reagan came to office pledging to be radically different in dealing with the Soviet Union. He disparaged detente. He criticized arms control. He assailed the three-decade-old doctrine of nuclear deterrence.

And, for a while, no one could accuse him of failing to deliver on that promise. Reagan showed little interest in getting to know Soviet leaders. He proposed a dubious and potentially destabilizing scheme for space-based defenses. In a speech that will be remembered long after he leaves office, he stooped to rhetorical depths not seen since the onset of the cold war, decrying the U.S.S.R. as the "focus of evil in the modern world . . . an evil empire." So what was the most conservative President of the modern age doing in the Grand Kremlin Palace, amid the zinc columns and gilt bronze chandeliers of the St. George Hall, smiling at the ruler of the "evil empire"?

Despite his dusty disdain for the word detente, Reagan was consecrating a renewed era of just that -- detente. He was reaffirming the central role of arms control as the coin of the realm when the globe's two ideological adversaries sit down to bargain. And he was working toward a new arms deal that would go well beyond the medium-range nuclear treaty that the Senate ratified last week to stabilize nuclear deterrence, not abandon it. Thus Reagan has shown yet again, more emphatically than any of his postwar predecessors, that four decades of accumulated realities have given a continuity to Soviet-American relations that even the most ideological of Presidents cannot discard. Not only have Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held four summits in the past 2 1/2 years, besting the record of Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, but, in Helsinki on his way to Moscow last week, Reagan hinted that he would also welcome a fifth meeting.

The gloss being put on the Moscow summit is that it is an intimate human drama, an Aquarius-Pisces encounter. Skeptics rightly fret at the danger in personalizing relations between the two powers: personal rapport is not the same as shared national interests. Yet Reagan is far more comfortable addressing human issues than abstract interests, and Gorbachev is certainly willing to try to manipulate that inclination. When Gorbachev got the President alone in Reykjavik's cramped Hofdi House in October 1986, they spun off toward the stratosphere of abolishing nuclear weapons before crashing back to earth. When they wander off after the Bolshoi Ballet Wednesday evening to Gorbachev's dacha, they may be tempted to try again.

But for better or worse, there are limits to what the two leaders can do. A summit is not just an encounter between two personalities; it is an interaction between two nations. Without a fundamental change in the clashing values and strategic interests of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., things can get only so chummy, even in a dacha. Conversely, and fortunately, the shared threat of nuclear annihilation restrains how bad relations can get.

Reagan holds a characteristically American view that great leaders affect history. When Gorbachev visited Washington last December, the President quoted Emerson: "There is properly no history, only biography." This meant, Reagan explained, "that it is not enough to talk about history as simply forces and factors." In some ways Reagan was right: his personal ideology and stubbornness have led to a nascent strategic-arms accord far more ambitious than anyone would have imagined when he took office. Yet in more fundamental ways, the agreement being shaped is not all that different from a SALT III treaty that a President Walter Mondale might have negotiated with Gorbachev.

The contrary Russian view, from Tolstoy through Lenin, is that history is mainly forces and factors. "In historical events great men -- so called -- are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event," Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace, "and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself." Herein lies another irony: just as Reagan's romantic view overstates the role that individuals can play in shaping history, the Russian view probably understates Gorbachev's personal potential.

Yet Gorbachev's chance to become the pre-eminent global figure of the late 20th century depends more on what he does at home than at summits. The cold war exists not because of a lack of understanding between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.; it exists because they understand each other all too well. Americans are fundamentally repelled by the character of the Soviet system: its repression, state control and expansionist tendencies. When Gorbachev came to power, U.S. officials insisted that a decrease in tensions would require a withdrawal from Afghanistan, a reduction of Soviet meddling in Africa and Central America, and at home freer speech, a more open political system and a less centralized grip on the economy.

With varying degrees of success and sincerity, Gorbachev for his own reasons has made progress on all these fronts. He pushed through the Central Committee last week a set of reforms that would limit the terms of most officials (though not including himself) to ten years and institute secret ballots for legislative and party posts. His tentative steps in favor of private enterprise even provoked the Soviet Union's first tax revolt, when its national parliament showed for once that it could be more than a rubber stamp. That could make perestroika all the more endearing to Americans, who have a special affinity for revolutions that involve tax revolts. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 65% of Americans said they thought superpower relations were "entering a new era." On American television the dour babushka in the old Wendy's hamburger ads has given way to the svelte Soviet customs agent who shares a Seagram's wine cooler with an American tourist.

Likewise, Soviet officialdom is warming toward American values. Michael Jackson's Pepsi ads are on the air, McDonald's is opening 20 restaurants in Moscow featuring "Bolshoi Maks," and the TASS news agency has entered into a joint venture with an American firm to produce souvenir summit T shirts with the TASS TOP 20 music logo on the back.

Such bouts of good feeling have been seen before -- and dashed before. Alone, they have little more significance than smiles at a summit, and they can be just as deceptive and dangerous. But to the extent that the new attitudes reflect real reforms in Soviet society that shrink the basic differences between the two nations, they could mark a historic turning point in the cold war. That would be far more important than anything Reagan and Gorbachev might conjure up at a crowded conference table, or inside a cozy dacha.