ROSY MYTHS ABOUT THE SOVIETS

A Cold Eye Looks at Some Deceptive

Mirages Every administration has its share of Kremlinologists who keep a watchful eye out for signs that the Soviet system is evolving for the better, the cold war is easing, and the Soviet bosses are about to grab at each other's throats. Mindful that a natural tendency to interpret the Kremlin auguries overoptimistically often influences U.S. policies. Russia Expert Philip E. Mosely. director of studies of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, examines in the current Foreign Affairs some "mirages that have plagued Western efforts to interpret the Soviet scene." Excerpts:

Mirage No. 1: Khrushchev sometimes has to carry out policies he does not believe in to placate the tough guys in high Soviet councils.

While his style is different, "Khrushchev's structure of rule is very similar to Stalin's.'' Like Stalin, he holds full power to install and remove the members of the Party Presidium and the Secretariat. There is no convincing evidence that his choices for these posts are "determined by any factions or cliques operating outside his control.''

Failure in the West to understand that Khrushchev is the undisputed and nearly absolute boss can lead to dangerous underestimation of "the skill and determination with which he is pursuing .Soviet aims abroad,'' and so weaken the West's ability to counter those aims. Indeed, it is evident that Khrushchev, through his emissaries abroad, has deliberately fostered the notion that the West should work for "relaxation of tensions'" so as to keep the "Stalinists'' from taking over.

Mirage No. 2: With the "atmosphere of terror" largely lifted since Stalin's death, the Soviet system is now evolving toward full freedom of opinion.

It is an appealing picture, "but one that can hardly stand the light of Soviet day." The secret police are still active, "still watching and writing things down." in case Khrushchev ever decides to restore the atmosphere of terror. And in the past two years, "the Soviet state has unsheathed a new weapon" of oppression, an imitation of Communist China's technique of using neighborhood vigilantes to enforce conformity. "By the vote of a neighborhood or block meeting assembled and dominated by Party members, any 'unproductive' member of society can be expelled from his place of residence and ordered to live at a distance of not less than 100 kilometers." Since the exiled victim would not be able to obtain a job or a place to live without approval from the state, the prospect of such banishment is a terrifying threat.

Mirage No. 3: The steady if unspectacular rise in the Soviet standard of living is bound, sooner or later, to undermine the dictatorial character of the regime.

On the contrary, the improvement in living standards under Khrushchev has added to his popularity and softened the tension between the people and the Party. ''Far from raising a stronger demand for freedom, the rising standard of living seems to have raised the level of popular trust in the Party's propaganda. It has positively enhanced Khrushchev's ability to mobilize his people's energies and loyalties behind his foreign as well as his domestic programs."

Mirage No. 4: The spread of Soviet education will inevitably give rise to a spirit of Questioning, independent reasoning and critical judgment that will eventually destroy the Party's ideological control.

University students showed "some stirrings of skepticism and dissent'' in the 1950s. but Khrushchev has taken tough measures to keep the stirrings from getting out of control. In 1959 a rule went into effect that students had to put in two years' labor in a factory or on a collective farm in order to qualify for admission to a university. In practice, this requirement is pretty much waived for students of natural sciences, engineering and medicine, but enforced for those who want to study in the "ideologically sensitive" fields of history, social sciences, law and journalism. And even after finishing his two years at "productive labor," the would-be student has to obtain a recommendation from either the Communist Party or the Young Communist League--in other words, he must have shown himself to be an undeviating Communist.

"During the decade of the 1960s," says Professor Mosely. "we shall, under present prospects, be dealing with a Soviet system that is growing rapidly in economic, scientific and military strength and which will have fewer rather than more difficulties in preserving political stability and an adequate measure of ideological uniformity. These growing strengths, not offset by equivalent new weaknesses, will enable its leaders to devote greater rather than smaller resources and political determination to achieving the world-wide purposes that have been proclaimed by Lenin and Stalin and now by Khrushchev."

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