PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOVIET UNION : Among the Homefolks, He’s Mr. Lonely : Mikhail Gorbachev comes to America battered by his attempts to reform a dying system that the people prefer.

In December, 1988, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev last visited the United States, he enjoyed the overwhelming support of the Soviet people. A national survey had just named him the most popular person in the Soviet Union, and almost 90% of the deputies in the People’s Congress had supported his bid for the chairmanship of the Parliament.

This week, Gorbachev is coming to America under radically different circumstances. Although his popularity in the West has remained high, the majority of the Soviet people now view him with suspicion and anger. In a recent poll, only one-third of the Soviet people nominated him as the most popular man of the year, and less than two-thirds of the People’s Deputies voted in favor of his becoming president.

At a Moscow watch factory, less than two-thirds of the party members supported Gorbachev as their delegate to the upcoming Communist Party Congress. Workers from the Urals were far from friendly to him during their recent meetings, and he received a cool welcome from the Congress of Young Communists, whose meeting was televised in April. Finally, the events during this year’s May Day parade confirmed the outrage that the masses feel toward Gorbachev. After five years of perestroika, the vast majority of the Soviets consider their lives more miserable now than during Leonid I. Brezhnev’s “period of stagnation.”

But are the Soviet people really being fair to Gorbachev? Yes and no. Of course, Gorbachev and his team are directly responsible for many of the evils currently bedeviling the Soviet people, particularly the inflation that for the first time is wreaking havoc on the Soviet economy.

The list of Kremlin actions and policies deemed misguided, if not downright wrong, is embarrassingly long. Still, despite the failures, the Soviet people’s opinion of Gorbachev seems rather harsh, although it’s not surprising, given the changes currently being experienced in the Soviet Union. Great American innovators such as Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt also faced intense public criticism when they broke from tradition and called for radical social change.

Although some of those now turning their backs on Gorbachev are liberals, and some are leftist radicals (Soviet terminology for advocates of capitalism), the majority of those expressing discontent are “conservatives.” Their ranks include millions of ordinary people who, afraid of an open market, preferred Brezhnev’s stagnation, with its low morale and work ethic, to Gorbachev’s dynamism.

When starting his reforms, Gorbachev was hesitant to encourage public polling for fear that the results would provide his enemies with arguments against democratization and privatization. Polls carried out by state and sociological institutions during the first three years of Gorbachev’s rule routinely skirted sensitive issues and refrained from trying to gauge popular attitudes toward the leader. Throughout this process, Gorbachev’s own speeches routinely referred not to data from nation-wide polls, but to letters from supporters and to his personal impressions from meeting with people.

By 1989, however, polls addressing sensitive subjects had clearly disclosed the existence of a large, deeply conservative segment of the population impervious to Gorbachev’s ideological offensive. The socialist orthodoxy common to this segment of the population is strongest with regard to economic issues. Even in Moscow, the most liberal city in the country, only one-third of the population can be considered committed advocates of economic reform.

Conservatism and fear of change are even more pronounced in other parts of the country. Despite their hatred of the Communist Party, most Soviet people fear the competition and unemployment that would accompany an open market system. Their fear is less ideological than it is practical: Having become accustomed to the lethargy of the past decades, they are hesitant to enter an economic community that demands discipline, standards and professional skills and responsibilities.

In a recent nationwide survey, more than half of the respondents preferred their current standard of living, combined with their easy work, to the prospect of having to work harder for a better life. This and other surveys have established that egalitarian views (e.g., the rejection of social differentiation and unemployment, support for rationing, etc.) are shared by at least half of the Soviet population. At the same time, about 80% of the Soviet people feel that the state is responsible for their well-being.

It is no surprise that the majority of the Soviet people reject many aspects of Gorbachev’s privatization program. Less than one-third of the population support cooperatives, private ownership of enterprises or the introduction of foreign businesses into the Soviet economy. Only 10% are ready to violate socialist principles by granting private businesspeople, instead of the state, the authority to hire workers.

It is likely that, during the upcoming referendum, the majority of the population will reject a rather modest package of economic reforms (which does, however, include drastic increases in food prices).

Gorbachev’s actions in favor of a market system (combined, of course, with the faltering Soviet economy) account in large part for the decline in his prestige. If he were better advised, and if he were a more sophisticated decision-maker, popular discontent would be far smaller and his numerous enemies would have far fewer arguments against his policies.

Still, his political difficulties stem not from his mistakes but rather from his spellbinding courage and determination to dismantle the Communist monster and to destroy centuries-old Russian traditions. World history has known few innovators of such stature. While remaining mindful of his weaknesses, the American people should remember that they are greeting an exceptional individual who has been able to raise himself from the level of ordinary apparatchik to the status of one of the greatest heroes of our time.