Soviet Daily Finds Harvard Hospitable

"Dzhon Garvard" starred in a feature article early this month in Izvestia, a Soviet daily, and of all the prominent Harvardians mentioned he came off smelling sweetest--probably because he managed to avoid the issue of detente.

Izvestia correspondent V. Kobysh toured "Garvardsy Universitet" last October, speaking to students "invariably dressed in jeans and sweaters," and lunching with members of the Faculty in a place he calls "the professors' cafeteria."

Kobysh was impressed, and not just by "the great names" of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Kissinger. The students he met all seem to have been friendly and attractive, jeans notwithstanding, and a surprising percentage spoke excellent Russian.

Kobysh also interviewed some great names in the Faculty, and seems to have liked some more than others. John Kenneth Galbraith, Warbaurg Professor of Economics and "for many in the Western world the oracle of 'enlightened' capitalism," speaks eloquently on the fear of socialism with which American have been inculcated.

Kobysh calls Galbraith "an economist and sociologist of world repute," a "brilliant essayist," and "a close associate of John Kennedy and ambassador to India at his request," and mentions that he is "more than two meters tall"

Adam B. Ulam professor of Government, gets a different sort of treatment. Ulam is a well-known Sovietologist, which Kobysh says is synonymous with "antiSoviet" here.

"For this reason he was of interest to us," the author says. "We wanted to know the entire gamut of moods at Harvard."

In Kobysh's description of their interview, Ulam appears tense, unfriendly 9and difficult to communicate with. He is not quoted as saying much--no more, anyway than his interviewer who finds it impossible to "retrain from polemical questions."

Ulam said yesterday that "the whole thing was completely inaccurate." In particular he dented Kobysh's statement that specialists on Eastern Europe tend to be "filled with hatred" for countries they are emigres from Ulam was born in Poland.

He said that he is opposed to the Soviet government "for obvious reasons, like this interview."

The lzvestia article quotes Ulam as responding to a question about detente, after "an oppressive pause," by saying "I'm afraid to disappoint you. On the whole I think detente is a positive thing."

According to Kobysh, "there was irony in his voice, but his face became spotted with red."

Ulam said yesterday. "That's lot of nonsense, of course. My face never gets spotted with red. I have sort of a red complexion anyway."

"Dzhon Garvard," who has sort of a bronze complexion, is accused only of holding a can of Schlitz. And he has an excuse: "Of course, this was the sauciness of some joker who had put an empty can of beer into the hand of the philanthropist.