YURI ANDROPOV IS DEAD and the Reagan Administration seems to think it has won a gunfight. The tact-less, admonitory lone of the Reagan letter of condolence and the Secretary of State's call for "new contacts" have the air of a gunfighter dictating terms; one would imagine the president holding his pistol to the hotline while saying, "Now get up slow..."

The United States message of condolence preceded Vice President Bush's delegation to the funeral to arrive in Moscow Tuesday. The statement contained, strangely enough, the Administration's throw-away paragraph usually reserved to excuse bad relations with the Russians: "...the United States has sought and will continue to seek a constructive and realistic dialogue and the reduction of arms." This is a truly odd sentence in a letter of condolence for a leader with whom one has not been able to negotiate at all, unless of course it was meant ironically. It's good to know we will continue to seek a dialogue with the Russians in which the Russians don't talk; but then we have one of those already.

Secretary of State George Schultz added his own share of tactlessness in his grotesque call for the Russians to make "new contacts" with the U.S., as if Andropov had somehow been the cause of Russian diffidence. "We seek to find solutions to real problems," said Mr. Schultz rather cryptically, adding "this applies in particular to the task of reaching equitable and verifiable agreements for arms reductions and reducing the risk of war." A White House set of separate comments added that the U.S. hoped the Soviet Union would "take advantage of the opportunities at hand" to improve relations. But what the administration seems to forget is that Andropov was no more the cause of that breakdown than our own gun-toting President: after all, it was Reagan that diplomatically labelled the Soviet Union as "evil empire." The Administration's apparent view that the Russians will suddenly "come around" now that Andropov has died seems dangerously and ludicrously wishful.

Nevertheless, this is a time of transition in the Kremlin and a time when American policy and overtures can make a difference. American policy that is, not blustering. As former Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. Averell W. Harriman noted last week, this is "a time for caution;" the Soviet leaders will be jockeying amongst each other for position and in the next week or so, the Kremlin will have a new leader. The choices range from younger, more worldly candidates like Mikhail Gorbaschev to the more conservative Konstantin Chernenko and Grigory V. Romanov, but speculation also includes the hawkish Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov, who seems singlehandedly to have masterminded much of Russia's military buildup Further, Ustinov is one of the major power-brokers in the Politburo and is likely to influence heavily the choice of Andropov's successor. Although it would be wrong to overstate the United States' influence on the selection, it seems foolish for the administration to push the Soviets into the arms of two particularly conservative candidates with its hawkish remarks.

WHATEVER the case, it seems foolish of the Reagan Administration not to seize this juncture as a crucial moment to build from the ashes of the Reagan-Andropov stand-off. President Reagan ought not to be sending ersatz messages of condolence in the back pocket of his Vice-President; he should be attending the funeral himself. If Reagan were to attend the funeral it would signal the end of one of the most foolish and dangerous trends in U.S. Soviet relations. Not since Kruschev came to America in the 1960s has a Russian or an American bead of state visited the other country during their tenure. Reagan, indeed, seems to have a grand imaginative disdain for Russia, as if it were really not a country worth visiting, but a land where savage Darth Vaders punish and abuse helpless Ivan and Vanyas. Unfortunately for Mr. Reagan's Jim and Sally, however, Jvan and Vanya are part of a very powerful country which seeks to negotiate with the same self-confidence and self-respect that Jim and Sally feel it will not do for the United States President to continue admonishing the Soviets, and it is supremely tactless for him to do so at a funeral. Instead, the Reagan administration itself should take this opportunity to try to improve relations: a trip to Andropov's bier would be the first step toward forming the basis of mutual respect which has been entirely missing from our cold-warrior relations.

But instead, the President seems bent on allowing this act of fate to drag relations with the Soviets not forward, but back to the starting gate. And fate promises to relieve the Administration of the necessity of proving conciliatory in the election year to come, to muffle the bad press resulting from having presided over the worst level of Soviet-American relations in recent history Circumstance has offered the Administration a convenient way out which they seem inclined to follow, even at the risk of losing a rare chance to open a better route.