World Notes

Perestroika has made little headway at the KGB, but the Soviet spies are taking a stab at glasnost. Even though KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov still delivers speeches with Stalinist overtones, his year-old public relations department is busy polishing the agency's image. It has opened a museum at headquarters in Moscow's Dzerzhinsky Square, allows some officers to give interviews and recently ran a Miss KGB contest in which women in bulletproof vests competed in skills like cooking, shooting, dancing, karate and applying makeup.

The KGB now thinks it is ready for prime time. Its p.r. director, Major General Alexander Karbainov, was in Rome last week to announce a joint Soviet- Italian production -- a 13-episode TV series to be called The KGB Tells All. It will cover such famous cases as the assassination of Leon Trotsky by one of Stalin's hit men and the defections of Kim Philby and other Britons who spied for Moscow. Preparations will take about a year, the producers say, and scriptwriters will be able to consult some secret material. The 90-minute docudramas will be filmed in Europe and the U.S.

The implication that the KGB is really about to "tell all" is, of course, just show business. When correspondents in Moscow asked the p.r. department for details on the TV series, they were told to put their questions in writing and wait.