What Direction the Soviet Union? : Gorbachev, Yeltsin need to bury the hatchet, get on with economic reform

The Soviet Union’s Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside held a summit meeting last week on the one cause they have in common: steering the Soviet Union’s economy away from collapse.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s polish, vigor and pursuit of ways to dismantle the Cold War make him one of the world’s most popular leaders--outside of his own country.

Boris N. Yeltsin, president of Russia, largest of the 15 Soviet republics, is a rumpled populist who comes across as something of a bumpkin to the rest of the world--but inside the border he is a national hero.

Gorbachev fired Yeltsin as the Communist Party chief of Moscow in 1987 for publicly demanding faster economic reform, and they have not exactly been on speaking terms since. During a break in their three-hour meeting Wednesday that covered just about everything, they still seemed about as comfortable in their new relationship as fathers at a shotgun wedding. But they know they need each other--or at least they understand that the Soviet Union needs them pointed in the same direction.

Gorbachev took some chances when he decided to charm the West into relaxing its guard so that the Soviet Union could cut its own defense budget and use the savings to turn its economy around. He has been much more cautious at home. Over his five years as leader, his program of perestroika has amounted to mere tinkering around the edges of the economy he says he is trying to restructure. Yeltsin is the same riverboat gambler on domestic affairs that he was in Moscow when he was canned. Elected head of the Russian republic in a landslide, he has since surrounded himself with young economists whose advice is to stop tinkering and start virtually from scratch to put together a market economy.

Gorbachev still talks about working toward a “regulated” market economy, but he did join Yeltsin recently to create a committee of economists generally closer to Yeltsin’s thinking than to the go-slow school. More symbol than substance? Maybe. Yesterday Yeltsin unveiled another economic blueprint that seemed clearly competitive with anything Gorbachev has ever proposed.

Breakdown is in the Soviet air. Armenia has declared a state of emergency to cope with armed dissidents. There are strikes everywhere. Planes are hijacked with some regularity. Soviets who insist on someone hearing their grievances have pitched a tent city just outside the Kremlin walls. It is not a time for two of the country’s stronger leaders to be on the outs.