NEWS ANALYSIS : Gorbachev Entering Most Perilous Time of His Rule

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is entering the most dangerous period of his five years of leadership of the Soviet Union--a time in which the future of his political and economic reforms and his own fate could be determined.

Within a few weeks, Gorbachev must deal decisively with the country’s severe economic problems, the potentially explosive nationalism in most of its constituent republics and the sharp political divisions, even within the top ranks of the ruling Communist Party, on how to proceed.

Gorbachev’s advisers speak frankly of a serious “multi-dimensional crisis” in the country and say they anticipate “a very rough struggle” in coming months, particularly in the regional and local elections scheduled for February and March and the preparations for a party congress later in the year.

Some Soviet journalists are now writing speculatively but openly of scenarios that could lead to a conservative coup d’etat removing Gorbachev, the breakup of the Soviet Union through ethnic clashes or a civil war that might break out between those trying to preserve socialism and those trying to replace it with capitalism.

The most recent opinion polls show not just increasing disenchantment with perestroika, as Gorbachev’s reforms are known, but even willingness by more than half those surveyed to return to more conservative rule if it meant more food in the stores.

“There is a real threat to Mikhail Gorbachev, a real danger for perestroika ,” a senior Communist Party official commented. “We need to go ahead faster, we need to do more, but we must take the people with us--and they are not ready.” The official continued:

“In the mass consciousness, there is a feeling that it was a great mistake to emphasize political reforms rather than economic restructuring at the outset. People do not accept that truly revolutionary structural changes were needed first for economic gains later. We dare not widen this gap between the people and the party too much.”

A member of the party’s policy-making Central Committee, also speaking privately, said: “Everything is at stake. We must navigate boldly to get out of this crisis, but also very carefully, for we have almost no margin for error.”

The crisis facing Gorbachev is really a series of interconnected political and economic crises, each having an impact on the others and none capable of resolution without progress on the rest.

“If our economic problems were not so acute, I doubt that we would be facing the nationalist unrest that we have today,” said a top Soviet editor, himself a member of the party hierarchy. “But people are hungry, and hunger makes people angry. If we had real political resolve, then we could have moved forward on those issues. . . .

“The knot of problems has grown tighter and tighter. There is a great temptation just to slice through it, but Mikhail Gorbachev’s patient untying of it is probably better.”

Gorbachev, to be sure, has dealt with successive crises over the last five years, reducing the immediate danger to his leadership and to the reform program, removing many of his opponents and always broadening and extending perestroika.

What worries many now is the complex nature of the crisis--and the much reduced time that Gorbachev has to deal with it.

The country’s top economists warned six months ago that the Soviet leader had a year to a year and a half, at most, to demonstrate to the country that the reforms are resolving problems, not creating more, and that they are improving living standards, not diminishing them. These economists include Vice Premier Leonid I. Abalkin and Prof. Nikolai Y. Petrakov, the new economic adviser on Gorbachev’s personal staff.

The government’s new economic program, designed by Abalkin, is expected to begin to show results in better supplies of consumer goods and food--but only in the second half of the year--and thus to intensify political pressure on Gorbachev to deal effectively with other problems to buy this additional time.

“We are entering a period of even greater uncertainty than we have known in the past two or three years,” a prominent political commentator remarked, “and this has the effect of heightening social tensions, which are already acute, and increasing the mood of crisis. More than anything else, we have a crisis of confidence.”

The most recent crisis was precipitated by the Lithuanian Communist Party’s declaration of its independence from the Soviet Communist Party last month in an unprecedented split that ultimately threatens the unity of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev is scheduled to visit Lithuania this week in a search for a compromise that will preserve party and state unity while assuring the Lithuanians real political and economic autonomy in a restructured, federal Soviet Union.

“We are determined there will be a compromise, that this problem will be resolved through political and democratic means,” said a party official who expects to travel to Lithuania himself as member of Gorbachev’s peace mission.

“But we cannot, at this point, see the shape of that compromise. We know it must satisfy not just the Lithuanians and ourselves (liberal supporters of Gorbachev) but also the conservatives. Otherwise, there will be a fight, and Gorbachev might be among the victims.”

These negotiations are being followed closely by the neighboring Estonians and Latvians along with the equally restive Ukrainians, Moldavians, Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis. Recent unrest in Azerbaijan along the Soviet-Iranian border has underscored the need to deal with these ethnic pressures.

The Lithuanian talks are also being watched, however, by increasingly nationalistic ethnic Russians who fear the country’s dismemberment. They also resent the bitter criticism aimed as much at them as the Soviet system by other ethnic groups.

For party conservatives, the Lithuanians’ declaration of independence has proved to be almost a perfect issue with which to charge Gorbachev with going too far, too fast and undermining not just socialism but the stability and unity of the country.

“This was such a heavy blow to Mikhail Gorbachev,” a Central Committee official commented, criticizing the Lithuanians. “People should assess not only what they could gain but what they could lose from such actions.

“Now, within the Central Committee and elsewhere, conservatives say, ‘See, this is what perestroika, democratization and glasnost (openness) have brought--anarchy, the destruction of socialism, the dismemberment of the party and state.’ That is why a compromise is so important and so urgent.”

Gorbachev hopes that he and other members of the party’s ruling Politburo will be able to fashion a compromise over the next two or three weeks or so with Lithuanian party leaders. His recommendation will be debated by the Central Committee at a special meeting, which was broken off last month after two days of often angry debate.

If his proposals on Lithuania prove unacceptable, as his supporters are warning, then the whole reform program will be in jeopardy from the conservative backlash.

The Central Committee is also scheduled to meet at the end of January to debate a new party program, a fundamental political statement that will both sum up the reforms so far and set the course for the next five to 10 years.

Already the focus of much political infighting, the program could divide the party even more sharply between the party’s liberal and conservative wings as Gorbachev seeks to accelerate and broaden his reforms at the party congress scheduled for October.

Times Moscow bureau chief Parks is on a visit to London.