BERLIN — The Russians are rolling out the red carpet for the international press covering the four-power foreign ministers' conference.

In fact, red carpets galore cushion the stone floors of the plush press center the Soviet-controlled East German government has set up for correspondents in Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' old headquarters just across the East-West sector boundary In East Berlin.

The rambling stone building housing the Soviet press center is neon-lighted and comes complete with overstuffed upholstery, television and a bar dispensing liquor, coffee, tropical fruit and pastries.

Next door is a "press restaurant" featuring waiters in tails and nightclub decor.

The "briefing room" at the East Berlin press center seats only 120 of the more than 1,000 correspondents covering the conference, but they are briefed in solid comfort.

Easy chairs are grouped around coffee tables on thick rugs.

Flowers overflow the press center and restaurant, and there isn't a picture of Lenin, Stalin, Malenkov or East German strongman Walter Ulbricht in the place.

In the lavishly furnished reading room at the Soviet press center you can scan all the Soviet and satellite press and a few newspapers from the Western world as well.

The London Times and the Daily Mail are there, as well as Paris' Le Monde and a sprinkling of West German newspapers including HICOG's German-language daily, Die Neue Zeitung.

Western correspondents who in the past have been persona non grata in East Berlin are now being welcomed with open arms.

Any correspondent with the yellow four-power press pass, including West Germans, is waved into the Russian press center and has the full use of its facilities.

As a come-on, the Russians are restricting the issuances of Soviet statements, Including Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov's opening day address to the foreign ministers conference, to their press center.

The East German postoffice has installed telephone and teleprinter connections to the main capitals of the world. Messages to New York are being transmitted via Paris.

Although phone connections had been cut with West Berlin for 18 months, you can now dial any West Berlin number from the Soviet press center — free of charge.

Electric clocks on the wall show the time in Berlin, Moscow, Peiping and New York and a bevy of pretty East German postoffice messenger girls hover about.

The Communists have taken the wraps off sex for the conference. Lipstick and rouge and sheer hose have been brought out for the covey of pretty hostesses assigned to the Soviet press center.

If you don't stop at a moneychange stand in the West sectors first, the Soviet press center is an expensive proposition.

The Soviets will change any currency, but they will give you just 2.22 East marks for a dollar (the West German exchange rate is 4.24, and West marks are changed one for one for East marks.)

That hasn't hampered Western correspondents, however, since any West-sector exchange stand will give you 4 East marks for each West mark.

That makes the Soviet press center a bargain buy, and correspondents are having a field day putting in expense accounts from the Soviet press center at the official rate.

Upon leaving the Soviet press center, it comes as a shock to re-enter the cold, drab world of East Berlin.

East Berliners, who haven't been able to buy any oranges or bananas, on sale in such abundance in the Soviet press center, can only dream of the luxury inside the press center.