CRISIS IN THE KREMLIN : With Phone Links Scarce, Soviet Line Is ‘Sorry, Busy’ : Emigre families: Increasingly overloaded circuits frustrate efforts to make contact with relatives.

Every once in a while, Vytautas Barkus picks up the telephone and braces himself for more agonizing frustration.

Sorry, each new operator he reaches tells him. All the circuits into the Soviet Union are busy. Please try again later. He tries again immediately. Sorry, he is told once more. Try later.

It is a litany becoming all too familiar for families desperate for the sound of a loved one’s voice from the Soviet Union.

For Barkus, a Van Nuys resident, the litany has added a nightmarish tinge to his wife’s dream of returning to her homeland of Lithuania after a 48-year absence. Although she is there, no one can tell him where she is, or whether she is all right. She is scheduled to catch a flight out of the Soviet Union today, but her husband will not know until she lands in Finland whether all is well.

The hunt for a clear telephone line is just as hard on emigrant families whose relatives remain in the Soviet Union. Thrilled by the collapse of the coup against President Mikhail S. Gorbachev but worried by the chaos it has created, anxious relatives spend hours dialing again and again and again.

Before the coup, more than 90% of all attempted calls into the Soviet Union failed to find a line, American Telephone & Telegraph spokesman Jim Messenger said. Now, with a hundredfold increase in telephone traffic between the United States and the Soviet Union in the past three days, the switchboard has achieved gridlock.

AT&T; has only 67 circuits serving the Soviet Union. U.S. Sprint recently won permission to establish 12 new circuits but has not yet concluded negotiations with Soviet officials to install them. In the meantime, Sprint customers’ calls are piggy-backed onto other carriers’ lines, including AT&T;, spokesman Vince Hovanac said.

A spokesman for MCI Telecommunications said his company also lacks any circuits of its own but has negotiated rights to route calls to the Soviet Union through about 25 circuits belonging to other companies, including some foreign long-distance carriers.

With only one call possible per AT&T; circuit and up to four calls per MCI circuit at any given time, the lines serving the Soviet Union were woefully inadequate even before Monday’s coup, officials acknowledge. With the coming of glasnost (openness), people in the United States and the Soviet Union have been reaching out to touch one another too fast for long-distance services to keep up.

Last month, AT&T; asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to hook into 90 new circuits available on the Soviets’ Intersputnik satellite. On Aug. 5, Sprint challenged that move, asking that 43 of the 90 Soviet lines be ceded to it.

On Wednesday, the FCC split temporary rights to 48 of the Intersputnik circuits between AT&T; and IDB Communications, based in Culver City. IDB President Edward Cheramy said he hopes his company’s circuits will be carrying calls within two weeks; AT&T; officials said they have no idea when theirs will be brought on line.

Some local operators are willing to chat amiably with callers while they try, try and try again to get through to an overseas operator.

For callers such as Barkus, such personal touches are little comfort.

“On Sunday night, I started at 9 and just kept dialing until 1 a.m., when I give up,” Barkus said. “They tell you to try again in a few minutes, but it doesn’t make any difference. . . . You just keep on dialing until you’re sick and tired, and you stop.”