"I would find it obnoxious to divest from South Africa but not from other countries," he said.

The largest single problem with the new activism is that American companies rarely advertise their sales to the Soviet government. In fact, only the State Department has a complete, confidential list of such companies, according to officials.

Has Been Considered

In a recent interview, President Bok said that monitoring investments in the Soviet Union would be useless compared with actions aimed at improving the ways companies deal with Blacks in South Africa.

But he said, "perhaps we should consider the issue" and did not rule out the possibility of subjecting companies operating in the Soviet Union to the same scrutiny applied to companies operating in South Africa. "I would like to think about it some more," he said.

In the past, Harvard's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility has considered the issue of the Soviet Union, both in terms of a general policy and on shareholder proxy resolutions voted on each spring by Harvard and other large investors, according to ACSR Secretary Jane W. Sherwin.

She said, however, that the ACSR and the Corporation, to which the body makes its recommendations, have regularly voted against any proxy resolutions which would require taking some sort of political stand on the country.

"Harvard has determined that South Africa is a special case," she said