As relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue to improve, more and more members of TIME'S editorial staff have been traveling through Russia, visiting sources long barred to Westerners.

Our business staff has also been taking advantage of the thaw. With Special Correspondent John Scott, Chief European Correspondent William Rademaekers and Moscow Bureau Chief John Shaw, I recently joined our nine international publishing and ad-sales directors for a six-day visit to Moscow and Leningrad. One purpose of our trip was to explore firsthand the prospects for trade between the Soviet Union and the West.

The authorities in Moscow seemed as eager as we were to exchange views. Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai Patolichev invited us to meet with him in his office. At a TIME luncheon, we had as our guests Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Nikolai Osipov, Dr. Georgy Arbatov of the Institute of U.S. Studies (Russia's leading America watcher), and Boris Karpov, the newly appointed president of the agency that controls all Russian advertising. In the House of Journalists, the Soviet press club, we were surprised to find that editors and reporters were quite willing to discuss such sensitive topics as advertising -- which is limited almost entirely to announcements of trade fairs and industrial exhibitions -- and even censorship.

Later, at Leningrad's Astoria Hotel, we had our annual publishing and sales meeting for TIME'S international editions. While the discussions in Moscow had focused on the growth of Russia's foreign business, the talk in Leningrad was about our own. For TIME is becoming a truly global weekly newsmagazine. Each week 5.6 million copies are sent to subscribers and newsstands all over the world, earning more than $140 million last year in ad revenues. Circulation outside the U.S. was 1.4 million in 1972, and annual advertising investment in our international editions has grown from $15.5 million in 1965 to $31.2 million in 1972. Some of the most dramatic growth has occurred in our new European edition and in our TIME Atlantic, Asia, East Asia and Japan editions.

TIME Russia? Not just yet. But when the time does come, we hope to be there too.

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