SOVIET UNION: The Amerikanisti

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Among the foreign observers visiting the U.S. this summer to view the political scene, one will look on with particular fascination. He is a suave, but tough Russian named Georgy Arbatov, who knows more about American politics than most Americans do and certainly more than any other Soviet citizen. A Communist Party Central Committee functionary with a doctorate in political science, Arbatov, 49, is now the Soviet Union's ranking America watcher.

As director of the four-year-old U.S.A. Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Arbatov heads a think tank of approximately 80 so-called Amerikanisti—the Kremlin's answer to Kremlinologists. They represent a new breed of Soviet information specialist who analyze facts rather than churn out propaganda. "We are neither professional peacemakers nor professional propagandists," Arbatov told TIME Correspondent John Shaw in Moscow last week, as he puffed on a Winston. "We are Marxists-Leninists, but within that frame of reference there is plenty of scope for understanding the U.S."

Housed in a 17th century mansion just off Kalinin Prospekt, Moscow's most modern thoroughfare, the U.S.A. Institute has a collection of 9,000 books and 10,000 periodicals about America, most of which would be proscribed reading elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The institute subscribes to 300 U.S. publications, including the Congressional

Record, and frequently opens its doors to visiting Americans for interviews and round-table discussions. Last week, Arbatov had a day of talks at the institute with Columbia University Kremlinologist Marshall Shulman, former Paris Peace Negotiator Cyrus Vance and former Pan American Airways President Najeeb Halaby.

Arbatov and his staff of thoroughly modern Marxists earn their keep by producing position papers for Soviet policymakers and servicing Soviet technocrats' curiosity about the management techniques of U.S. business and industry. Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev is thought to have relied heavily on institute position papers and briefings when he prepared to meet Richard Nixon at the Moscow summit. The institute has published a book on American research and development as well as reports on such subjects as "The Container Revolution in Transport," "Agricultural Research in the U.S.A.," and "Psychology and Cybernetics."

The institute also publishes a monthly journal, USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, that offers occasional translated reprints from the American press and articles on U.S. affairs by Soviet America watchers. The reprints are tendentiously edited to emphasize U.S. faults, and Soviet contributors faithfully hew the party line. Even so, USA contains more information, more sophisticated interpretation and less doctrinaire doubletalk than any other official Soviet publication. "Telling and hearing the truth, as we see it, about the U.S. will not harm our society," says Arbatov. Still, USA is considered a bit too candid for the masses: it is not sold on any newsstand in the U.S.S.R. Its circulation is limited to 32,000 copies, mostly among the country's political and managerial leadership.