Hang Together, or Hang Separately : Soviets: Economic reform must take on an urgent beat. For that to happen, Gorbachev and Yeltsin will have to become allies, not foes.

It is becoming harder to end a visit to the Soviet Union in an optimistic mood. As shortages increase and the risk of hyper-inflation grows, the Soviet Union can no longer afford to move slowly to economic reform. Popular discontent is growing and if there should be not just shortages but hunger, it is by no means to be ruled out that a strangely variegated anti-reformist coalition could be put together that might command considerable public support.

If shock therapy is going to be needed for the Soviet economy--and the more serious Soviet economists increasingly think it is--then as broad as possible a “center-left coalition” (the “left” in current Soviet terminology meaning the most enthusiastic marketeers) needs to be put together as a matter of urgency. When Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin set their principal economic advisers to work on a common program, it looked as if this might have been achieved. But Gorbachev’s desire to keep Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and key ministers within that coalition turned out to be the rock on which the plan foundered.

However good were Gorbachev’s reasons for this tactical retreat--and he has over the past 5 1/2 years been a master of political timing--Yeltsin felt deceived as, indeed, did some of Gorbachev’s more radical supporters. Yeltsin reacted brusquely by categorizing Gorbachev’s revised economic guidelines as “catastrophic” and a Gorbachev-Yeltsin alliance began to recede into the Moscow mists.

Yet what neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin fully realize is how much they need each other, whatever difficulties flow from their contrasting personalities and conflicting ambitions. If they remain rivals rather than allies, then on top of all his other problems a major political crisis faces Gorbachev in 1991.

The draft of a new constitution for the Russian Republic, which has not yet been approved by the republic’s Supreme Soviet nor officially published, but which I read here last week, renames the chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic the “President of the Russian Federation” and describes him as “head of state.” It also stipulates that this person be elected by the citizens of Russia for a period of four years.

The potential significance of this can hardly be overstated. What it means is that in March or April of next year, Boris Yeltsin has every chance of being the first popularly elected leader of Russia in the whole of Russian history. Gorbachev will still be leader of the Soviet Union, but one who was indirectly elected in March, 1990, by a legislature that was chosen a year earlier, before the radicalization of the Soviet political process had gone so far.

In spite of Gorbachev’s justifiably high international standing, his domestic authority vis-a-vis a popularly elected Yeltsin will be weaker than ever next year. He will come under strong pressure to move up the next election for the president of the Soviet Union and run against whatever competition may be forthcoming. If, in those circumstances, he refused to hold an election, his decrees would be less and less likely to be obeyed. If he did hold it, he would--as things stand now--be very hard put to defeat Yeltsin, should he decide to stand for the presidency of the entire country.

Some of Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s informal advisers are now trying to impress on both men how much they need each other. But while Gorbachev badly needs a cooperative rather than competitive relationship with Yeltsin, why should Yeltsin be prepared to compromise with Gorbachev when he has everything to play for?

Judging by some of his words and actions, Yeltsin himself may be inclined to see things that way. However, his popularity owes almost everything to being perceived as the anti-Establishment candidate, untainted by policy failures and a declining standard of living. Yeltsin in power could, however, achieve a stabilization of the currency and begin to make the necessary changes in the Soviet economic system only at the expense of initially greater hardship than exists at present. He would, moreover, if he lost the support of the Gorbachev group, have to attempt to govern with an inexperienced team of administrators. He would begin to learn what Gorbachev has been up against. The eventual outcome would be rather more likely to be an authoritarian counterrevolution than the continuing evolution of democracy.

For those who wish to see both the further democratization of the Soviet political system and the marketization of its economy, in the face of mounting difficulties a formal or informal alliance between Gorbachev and Yeltsin is now more essential than ever. But do they yet fully realize that they must hang together or (figuratively, one hopes) hang separately?