NANCY GLIMPSES 'SLAVIC SOUL' IN VISIT TO PASTERNAK'S GRAVE

Author: Associated Press

Date: Tuesday, May 31, 1988
Page: 8
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN

Mrs. Reagan, a longtime admirer of the Nobel Prize winner's novel "Dr. Zhivago," said the noontime visit to the wooded Moscow suburb of Peredelkino ''impressed me greatly. It was very, very touching."

Mrs. Reagan's second day here included a visit to an English class at a prestigious Moscow middle school, where she admitted that the Russian language is a tongue-twister for her.

"All I have been able to manage so far is spasibo (thank you)," she confessed.

Mrs. Reagan's US limousine was accompanied by about a dozen official Soviet cars, and she was whisked down a cleared highway to the suburb about 15 miles outside the Soviet capital.

Peredelkino is a favorite retreat, sprinkled with elegant old frame dachas provided by the state for the use of the intelligentsia and other favored citizens.

She was treated to a lunch of caviar, potatoes, borscht, coffee and fresh vegetables by the official poet Andrei Voznesensky, who invited Mrs. Reagan to his peach-colored dacha nestled among the pine and birch trees.

"I think, for the American leader's wife to come to our country, to visit the grave of Pasternak, this is very important," said Voznesensky, attired in a silk neck scarf, light gray pants, white shirt and white-and-gray striped jacket, who came to the gate of his home to greet Mrs. Reagan.

Voznesensky, a widely published author in the Soviet Union and a prominent supporter of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts, told reporters it was important for Mrs. Reagan to learn the differences between the two nations.

Americans have computers and technology, he said, but the Russians have ''Russian poetry and something strange -- the Slavic soul. You learn about this with poetry." Such poetry "is like religion" for the Soviets, he said.

Pasternak was the cause of much controversy in the Soviet Union, even years after his death in 1960.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but his fame provoked a bitter official campaign against him. He was forced to reject the award, and returned to his dacha, where he died of cancer.

Before the lunch, Mrs. Reagan walked from her limousine down a short path to Pasternak's grave, which lies on the edge of a large cemetery across from potato fields. US officials said a dirt road near the site apparently had been covered with asphalt for the visit.

Reporters were not allowed to view her at the gravesite, but her spokeswoman, Elaine Crispen, said Mrs. Reagan placed flowers on the fenced-in grave as Pasternak's son, Yevgeniy, stood by and softly hummed a requiem.

Mrs. Reagan toured School No. 29 and Peredelkino while President Reagan and Gorbachev continued their summit talks at the Kremlin.

Mrs. Reagan toured the ancient fortress and its icon-filled churches Sunday in the company of Raisa Gorbachev, and tomorrow she planned to tour the Baltic capital of Peter the Great, Leningrad.

At the school, Mrs. Reagan defended US students and their study habits when she got a grilling at a mini-press conference with Soviet children.

"Do American children learn Russian?" queried one child in Russian as Mrs. Reagan fielded questions during an hourlong visit to the school.

All children at the school, which caters primarily to the children of high- ranking officials and Soviet intelligentsia, begin to study English at age 8.

Mrs. Reagan -- clearly aware most Russian language studies in the US are on the high school and college levels and that she was among the children of Soviet privileged -- responded, "No, they don't."

But then she parried, "Do all the Soviet children in every school here study English?"

The children immediately broke out in loud argument, many insisting that, indeed, all Soviet children do learn English.

Mrs. Reagan, who finally remembered with a chuckle that she had learned several Russian words, responded "Yes, yes, I mean, da, da," at one point.

But she flunked a pronunciation test when the children tried to get her to say the Russian words for peace, earth and sun -- mir, zemlya and solnsa -- and she was able to get only one out of three. At one point, she threw up her hands in exasperation.

TOLBER;05/30 NKELLY;06/01,14:27 FIRST31