WASHINGTON REPORT: The Possessed and the Dispossessed:

...Solzhenitsyn is as welcome among foreign-policy bureaucrats here as Dostoevsky, had he been invited as a delegate to the Council of Vienna, or Tolstoi, had he been invited to the Versailles Conference-or, perhaps, Jesus to the First Council of Nicaea...

...Nor should it be forgotten that Solzhenitsyn speaks as a royalist in politics and economics and religion...

...those from the midwestern states are unhappy about the American grain sales to the Soviet Union under deceptive conditions three years ago and want more information about grain sales that may occur soon...

...Foreign policy sets a nation's course, but human beings, too, often appear to alter the course...

...Over the years, we tend to fluctuate between benevolent thoughts and righteous chastisement of both the Soviet Union and China...

...But moderate and even left-of-center senators are skep-tical...

...At this writing, this attitude does not reflect the mindless, knee-jerk, demagogic anti-Com-munism of the 1950s that fractured the country...

...Henry Kissinger has stood in the White House door in order to bar Solzhenitsyn's meeting with the President...

...THE WASINGTON REAPORT THE POSSESSED AND THE DISPOSSESSED Alexander Solzhenitsyn, most famous graduate of the Gulag Archipelago, has been touring the United States in recent weeks...

...Solzhenitsyn's talk at the congressional reception for him took place on the day that there began the first joint U.S.-Soviet space mission...

...All the same, his appearance in the United States at this time is making an impression on politicians here in Washington-an impression that is likely to influence the future of "detente" with the two major Communist nations, China and the Soviet Union-particularly the latter...

...others suggest we mistake a change from a scowl to a smile on Soviet officialdom for a change in attitude...

...After all, just what would the Kissingers of the great nation-states say in response to Solzhenitsyn if he quoted to them the last lines of Dostoevsky's novel, "The House of the Dead": "Yes, with God's blessing...

...The invitation itself was illustrative of friction between the Congress and the President over policies and pro-grams that relate to the Soviet Union...

...Soviet spacemen maneuvered 150 miles above the earth, while Solzhenitsyn protested out of his experience the imprisonment of minds and bodies within the Soviet Union itself...

...Simultaneously, too, Kissinger, sowing sibylline words on behalf of "detente," was touring midwestern states...

...His novels read more like Frank Norris's or Zola's-bluntly powerful, but crude...

...SISYPHUSr viable they may be...

...President Ford gained considerable domestic support by his actions, however debatable, in retrieving an American freighter and its crew that had been seized in the spring by Cambodians...

...As for China, any meaningful attitude within the Con-gress may not be discernible until scheduled trips there by senators and representatives take place this summer and fall...

...Newer members -both young and old from northern and western states -are showing signs of being unenthusiastic about Kis-singer's cooperative toward the Soviet Union...

...He would not have felt comfortable at Independence Hall two hundred years ago, or at an economists' convention today, or in most churches on Sunday mornings...

...Several Senators on and off the Foreign Relations Committee visited the Soviet Union during the July 4 recess...

...Kissinger, undoubtedly, would argue that there is no clear alternative, amid nuclear arms rivalries, to pursu-ing detente-despite the imbalance...

...Instead, they are willing to accommodate in the context of the perils of nuclear warfare...

...SISYPHUS...

...Ironically, Solzhenitsyn, refugee from the Soviet Union, found himself, as of mid-July, uninvited to the White House, where, presumably, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger spend a lot of time formulating plans to thwart Communism's advance here, there and else-where...

...Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead . . . What a glorious moment...

...These senators suggest the Soviets have nothing to offer us in the way of space technology...

...Whatever the undoubted need to avoid nuclear war and mindless activism, it is useful to remember the profoundly collectivist and anti-individualist cast of the Soviet and Chinese governments, however viable they may be...

...But the unofficial word in early July that he would not receive Solzhenitsyn on grounds of "foreign-policy considerations" has lost him standing both in the country at large and, importantly, in the Congress, particularly those whose main interest is in foreign policy...

...Of cqurse, it's misleading to gild the literary lily, even if Solzhenitsyn did receive a Nobel Prize for his writings...

...The turnout was large...

...This observation seems necessary because more is being made of him than is warranted, both as writer and political critic, by the AFL-CIO agitprops who are paying his expenses in the United States...

...So, per-haps, with Solzhenitsyn, coming at a time when there is a perceptible uneasiness among moderate and liberal members of Congress about the course of detente...

...Those who made the trip to Russia returned most impressed with the secretive, repressive, uncooperative attitude of their hosts-whether it be dinner-table con-versation or inquiries about the U.S.-Soviet joint space mission or whatever...

...In sum, this suggests not so much a resurgence of anti-Communism, as a principal arrow in the politician's quiver, as it does a growth of recalcitrance in any dealings with the Soviet Union-the Soviet Union as a nation, not as a doctrin-aire nation, gospel in hand, seeking to rule the world...

...Is "detente" founded on public relations or diplomacy...

...But these members of Congress argue that the policy of "detente" appears to be one-sided...

...Should the President ultimately relent and see Solzhenit-syn the political damage would already have been done...

...The English translations of his novels give the impres-sion he is an awkward and propagandists writer, who does not deserve to move in the same Pantheon as Chekov, Gorky, Turgenev, as well as Dostoevsky and Tolstoi...

...His aides argue that the imbalance is inherent in the relationships be-tween the two countries-that the United States, being more advanced, has so much more to offer in terms of technology, agricultural and industrial commodities, etc...

...Concretely, Ford's refusal generated an invitation by Senators of disparate political tenden-cies, to Solzhenitsyn to meet with members of Congress at an open house in the Capitol...

...Solzhenitsyn, resembling either an un-kempt religious prophet or a dishwasher, talks about rights and wrongs in this fortress city of the West whose foreign-policy makers, traditionally deaf to such con-siderations, argue into the night about strategies and tactics...

...A few of these, hitherto reacting reflexively to the word "detente" as something "good," now are in-dicating a willingness to reassess their attitude and, in so doing, to summon Kissinger to the committee room to ask him "just what is d6tente doing to benefit us...