(FORTUNE Magazine) – Amazing phenomenon, the Chautauqua conferences. Resting on premises that are totally and obviously false, they nevertheless irresistibly attract thousands of Americans who do not seem to have been lobotomized. What were they doing there? How could all those nice people visiting the 840-acre Chautauqua estate (it's in upstate New York) late in August persuade themselves they were engaged in a genuine dialogue with ordinary Russian citizens acting independently of their government? Is it a secret or something that the Russkies were selected by Intourist, which means by the KGB? And even if they were ordinary Russian citizens, how could the Americanskis believe that a week of baby talk about mutual contacts and better understanding will translate into a more peaceful world? We confess to having covered the Chautauqua conference without actually setting foot in the place. Our strategy: Cough up the $84 the sponsors were demanding for a set of 12 audio tapes of the sessions. An unnerving feature of this strategy is that it implies you will listen to the tapes, but friends, we made it only through No. 1: the opening day ceremonies. These featured welcoming remarks by Steven Rhinesmith, a cultural-exchange functionary associated with the U.S. Information Agency, who found 12 different ways to opine that a ''greatly needed dialogue'' was about to take place. In his sign- off line, Steve earnestly wished the delegates ''a tremendous amount of hope,'' which almost means something but not quite. A leader of the Soviet government delegation scored with the crowd when he noted that Jefferson had once said the course of America is the course of humanity, then added that nowadays we should rephrase the passage and identify humanity with ''the course of the U.S. as well as the Soviet Union as the most powerful nations.'' Jefferson's rewrite won thunderous applause. Also helping to beef up the opening-day lineup was Republican Representative Amory Houghton Jr., the erstwhile glassmaker who now represents the Chautauqua district in Congress. Amory kept uttering strange, unparsable sentences like: ''The denominator of peace does not first require major official diplomatic leadership.'' He also expressed reverent wonder at the fact that the Chautauqua initiative gathered strength three years ago despite ''the war in Afghanistan, in Nicaragua . . .'' No matter how many times we listened to the tape, it kept sounding as though U.S. aid to the contras was somehow on the same plane as the invasion of Afghanistan. Somehow, it didn't leave us with a tremendous amount of hope.