The Past Is Dead; the Future Is the Only Game in Town : Soviet Union: Its people are thrashing about in the void left by the collapse of Leninism, eager for any guidance in remaking their society.

The Russian Revolution of November, 1917, is long since dead, buried under disabused hopes and discredited economics. The new Soviet revolution under way will determine the nation’s destiny, but so far it has no clarity.

Confusion extends from members of the Supreme Soviet to Moscow’s intellectual elite to the average worker. It is reflected in a street scene on a snowy Sunday morning: The queue of fur-capped Muscovites waiting to visit Lenin’s tomb is little longer than that winding toward the new McDonald’s restaurant.

For any American with Moscow experience, the quality of discussion is stunning. As opposed to the past, the United States is blamed for nothing. No one is silent or adverts to slogans from Communist Party hand-outs. Government bureaucrats recite a devastating litany of economic failure in a country that has long pretended to be the United States’ rival. Party stalwarts try to keep the faith, but do so in terms of “socialist renewal” rather than adherence to old dogma. Intellectuals in government institutes ignore the presence of foreigners and open microphones as they wash every conceivable bit of dirty linen in pursuit of a viable alternative to the wretched status quo. They accept the attendant risks of retribution if President Mikhail Gorbachev falls from power.

Despite initial doubts in the United States, the Soviet crisis is not about tactics or tinkering: It is about the very purpose and possibilities of the state and its relationship to a people that has never been enfranchised. The word democracy is no longer used as propaganda; rather, in some form, democracy is seen as a necessary instrument of politics, pluralism and gaining popular support for radically transforming society.

In the West, change in the Soviet Union is largely viewed in terms of foreign policy. Eastern Europe has come out from under Moscow’s dominance, even though 600,000 Soviet soldiers remain deployed there. Germany is uniting, even though Kremlin leaders object to the method. But in Moscow, these are seen as secondary matters because the only game in town is the future of the Soviet Union.

A new repression may still be possible. Bonapartism--the military’s imposition of authority--cannot be ruled out, perhaps with Gorbachev as his own Napoleon. But the old structures are clearly finished. All means of mass communication, including lengthy television coverage of fractious and liberal debate in the Supreme Soviet, tell every Soviet citizen that the era of V. I. Lenin is over. Its place is filled by a consuming void--an economy that has more qualities of the developing world than of the West, a dispiriting bleakness to everyday life, an absence of incentives to do one’s best, a rise in crime, a vacuum of values now that Marxism-Leninism is shown to have been a sham.

Against this background of moral and philosophical collapse, efforts by Gorbachev and others to create something else are all the more impressive, especially because no one is confident that any alternative will work. The certitude of Leninist theology, measured against results, has bred generations of skeptics. Yet there is growing consensus, even among unreconstructed Communists, that two elements are critical: an economy that is at least responsive to market forces, and the development of a politics that can provide popular legitimacy for change.

Gorbachev and his allies are trying to build a foundation in law for economic overhaul that, among other things, will mean a vastly reduced role for the Communist Party. Debate now centers on the possibility of private property. At some point, perestroika must accept a price mechanism that will permit valid economic choices to replace bureaucratic fiat. And with this price mechanism must come an end to subsidies, acknowledgment of unemployment, a reduced living standard for most people, and a social uncertainty not known since the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.

Most Soviet leaders and observers would prefer that this change come about step-by-step, with each advance ratified through an emerging public opinion and in elections, which have shown a healthy tendency to “throw the rascals out.” But such an approach has been described as akin to motorists’ trying to shift, a little at a time, from driving on the left to driving on the right: At some point, a crash is likely.

After five years in power, Mikhail Gorbachev is thus given some benefit of the doubt in trying to do the undoable. He is credited with sanctioning an amazing tolerance for public debate. He is largely forgiven for unleashing pressures by non-Russian republics for independence. (Whatever their political status, so the argument in Moscow goes, these republics will continue to be tied economically to Russia.) But he is rapidly losing popularity because the lives of average Soviet citizens have become worse.

Increasingly, therefore, thoughtful members of the Soviet elite hope that the West, and especially the United States, will help the Soviet Union in its historic predicament. President Bush is credited with at least not making matters worse. But while the West should be responsive, no one other than the Soviet peoples can surmount this current time of troubles to create a society that must be changed more radically than Lenin ever envisioned.