Soviet trade tests innovation and endurance.

• Author: Richardson, Jeffrey
• Position: Alaskan companies work to adapt to open trade with the Soviet Union; includes related article: Building a bridge across the Bering Sea

The reporter might have been from any major American daily newspaper. He wore a neutral suit and tie and carried a standard-issue pen and pad. But his question, even if it had not required translation, would have broadly hinted that this reporter was going to file his story with a Soviet newspaper. Furthermore, his question conveyed in a subtle but significant way the kind of issues that are challenging many Alaskans eager to do business with the Soviet Union.

The reporter wanted to know: Do Alaskans find the military presence in the state difficult to cope with? Is the military overbearing, careless with toxic waste? Does it control civic affairs and interfere with civil liberties?

The question, of course, reflects a Soviet state of affairs very different from the subordinate domestic role played by the military in the United States. More importantly, however, the fact that the reporter was asking such a question at all of his Alaskan colleagues, as well as negatively editorializing about the Soviet military, suggests just how far the Soviet-American political and economic thaw has progressed.

In fact, the reporter's presence in Alaska at the recent Northern Regions Conference, along with about 60 high-ranking Soviet officials, signals a new maturity in the state's blossoming cultural and commercial relationship with the Russians, in particular peoples of the Soviet Far East.

That relationship has its genesis deep in Alaska's past. Even in business dealings, Alaskans are finding that Russian counterparts share a sometimes glamorous vision of special ties dating from a Russian colony on American shores. Beyond the natural affinity of neighbors with a mutual history sharing an isolated part of the globe, the prospect of restoring and expanding ancient aboriginal family connections on both sides of the Bering Straits is fueling the desire of many Alaskans to pursue economic adventure in the Soviet Far East.

Northern people have an empathy for each other that goes beyond that of people of other latitudes,' says Perry Eaton, president of the Community Enterprise Development Corp. in Anchorage. We seem to share basic survival instincts that require getting along with our fellow man. Our basic environment demands it.'

JoAnn Zentner, executive director of the Foundation for Social Innovation Alaska in Juneau, an affiliate office of a Moscow-based organization facilitating exchange between Alaska and the Soviet Union, notes the Soviets are keenly aware of Alaska's strategic role in emerging SovietAmerican relationships. She characterizes that role as "dynamic and unique."

They're very enthusiastic about Alaska. They view us as the gateway to the rest of America. It's really not cliche," Zentner adds.

But as the euphoria of now countless cultural and scientific exchanges begins to run its course, a new generation of economic prospectors is beginning to explore the wilderness that characterizes doing business in a country almost completely lacking in business knowledge and infrastructure. These new pioneers are more focused, more calculating and, arguably, more realistic. They have expanded their economic horizon geographically, beyond the sparsely populated Magadan Region, setting covetous sights on Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, Russia's "Pearl of the...