PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOVIET UNION : A Heavyweight for Change Is Lost : Perhaps this is one of Gorbachev’s tactical retreats, but the loss of reformist allies may cripple his liberal thrust.

The resignation of Eduard A. Shevardnadze as Soviet foreign minister is just about the worst piece of news to come out of Moscow this year--a year that has had more than its share of dismal stories after the euphoria (for the West at least) of 1989. It is bad news, firstly, because of Shevardnadze’s personal and political qualities and, secondly, for what it implies about the balance of forces in the Soviet leadership today.

Shevardnadze is a courageous man who in his previous political career as Communist Party first secretary in Georgia took on the well-organized local mafia and survived several attempts on his life. He also initiated as much experimental reform in Georgia as was possible within the narrow limits imposed by the Brezhnev leadership. When Mikhail Gorbachev brought him into full membership of the Politburo and appointed him foreign minister in the summer of 1985, it was an inspired move. He immediately became a vital ally in the quest for radical reform at home as well as a convinced proponent, and skillful implementer, of the “new thinking” on Soviet foreign policy.

Shevardnadze established relations of trust with Western foreign ministers--not least with American secretaries of state George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III--of a kind that had been totally lacking in the case of his predecessor, Andrei Gromyko. It was not only a great deal more charm that Shevardnadze brought to the office he adorned but more enlightenment and more integrity.

The speech that Shevardnadze had earlier prepared for delivery at Thursday’s session of the Congress of People’s Deputies (and which was later distributed) was almost as emotional as the one he actually uttered. It was a passionate defense of the policies he and Gorbachev had pursued together that had led to the end of the Cold War and Soviet acceptance of an independent Eastern Europe and a reunited Germany.

The extemporaneous speech he did deliver was remarkable not only for the sensational news of his resignation but also for its mixture of praise and rebuke for Gorbachev. Shevardnadze confirmed what well-informed observers already knew--that he and Gorbachev were essentially like-minded people and, more than that, friends and political allies--but he implicitly criticized Gorbachev for conceding too much to the “reactionaries” who would like to reverse many of the gains in democracy and freedom achieved in the last few years.

It is sad that Gorbachev reacted sharply and critically to Shevardnadze’s speech, although understandable inasmuch as it came to him as a bolt from the blue. Shevardnadze apparently did not discuss his decision in advance with Gorbachev or with his colleagues in the Foreign Ministry, and there was a strong element of impulsiveness about it. This is indicative of the strain he has been under. The pressures have been intense, with attacks from domestic hard-liners on the policy he was pursuing in Europe and the Middle East adding to the stress caused by the developments in his native Georgia.

Shevardnadze’s own political base disappeared with the capture of the Georgian parliament by a pro-independence majority this fall. That weakened his position in Moscow; he became more than ever dependent on the support of Gorbachev and the Soviet legislature. As a patriotic Georgian, Shevardnadze has been in favor of real devolution of power to his own republic (and also, it should be added, to the others), but as a matter of conviction as well as a requirement of his office he has favored the preservation of the union.

The threat now being posed by the Soviet military and the KGB, with at least some ambivalent backing from Gorbachev, to use whatever coercion may be necessary to thwart separatism in the Soviet republics must have added greatly to the strain. Shevardnadze’s uneasy relations with the military stem in part from his impassioned criticism of the brutal killings of Georgian demonstrators in Tbilisi in April, 1989. He doubtless viewed with horror the prospect of much more widespread and systematic violence being applied as a means of preserving the union.

This, I believe, is part of the background to his decision to resign. The break between Gorbachev and Shevardnadze is, however, a political tragedy. In a recent meeting with Soviet intellectuals, Gorbachev described a stroll in the woods he had taken with Shevardnadze some time before he became Soviet leader. Reflecting together on their increasing disillusionment with the unreformed Soviet system, they had spoken frankly, and Shevardnadze had said “it had all gone rotten.” Gorbachev agreed with this assessment, adding for the benefit of his 1990 audience: “Everything was indeed rotten to the core.”

That is not, to put it mildly, the view of a great many people who still hold positions in the Soviet Establishment. With immense political skill, Gorbachev had put together a pro-reform coalition in which both Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev were among the key actors.

With the recent abolition of the Presidential Council, Yakovlev no longer has an important formal position and his relations with Gorbachev have become more distant. With the resignation of Shevardnadze, another heavyweight proponent of radical change in the Soviet Union has been lost from the leadership coalition.

I reject the view of many in the West that Gorbachev has been needlessly worried about dangers from the “right.” On the contrary, an informal alliance of unreconstructed party officials (especially in the Russian Communist Party headed by Ivan Polozkov), senior military officers, Russian nationalists and at least a part of the KGB has posed (and presents today) a serious potential threat. It was to preempt more drastic action on their part that Gorbachev in recent weeks made a number of concessions to military and KBG opinion.

By involving the KGB in the distribution of food from abroad, Gorbachev may have felt that he was providing them with a useful function that would keep otherwise idle hands from doing more harmful work. But he took a greater risk early this month when he chose as interior minister the 53-year-old party official and former KGB chief in Latvia, Boris Pugo, and as first deputy minister the 47-year-old former commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Boris Gromov. Gromov has been a name often on the lips of those in the Soviet Union who are under the illusion that what they need is a strongman who will become a national savior. Gorbachev may have turned this general into a politician in order to co-opt him, but by so doing he has made it legitimate for Gromov to harbor political ambitions.

There is a more general danger for Gorbachev and for the liberalization and democratization of the Soviet Union: the greater his reliance on the military and the KGB as instruments of rule, the more influence both will demand in determining the content of policy. With the departure of Shevardnadze, which followed the sidelining of Yakovlev and the removal of the relatively liberal interior minister, Vadim Bakatin, in early December, the balance of forces within the leadership has been altered. Gorbachev needs a “left” as well as a “right” within the coalition if he is to continue to present himself as a centrist and yet at the same time move in a basically liberal direction.

All is not yet necessarily lost for Gorbachev or for proponents of radical change. More than once the Soviet leader has taken one step backward shortly before taking two steps smartly forward. In recent weeks he has certainly been engaging in one of his tactical retreats.

If, as in the past, that is to be only a temporary change of direction, Gorbachev will need serious proponents of a democratic and market-oriented transformation of the Soviet system alongside him in the leadership.

Politicians of the ability and essential decency of Eduard Shevardnadze do not grow on trees. If reconciliation between these two former friends and allies should prove impossible, Gorbachev must move fast to bring into the leadership more people of a similar mind-set. Otherwise, he could become a prisoner of those powerful, unreconstructed elements whom he previously outwitted and who will never forgive him for shaking the foundations of their political world.