Resignation Points to Depth of Soviet Crisis : News ANALYSIS

With his dramatic resignation, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze hoped to shock the Soviet Union into confronting the “reactionary forces” that he said are strong enough now to kill perestroika and are plotting to do so.

Bluntly and without apology, Shevardnadze said he had quit to force the country to realize the immediacy and severity of the danger posed by the right to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms.

But his break with Gorbachev, clear and bitter despite declarations of friendship and continued support, also threw into bold relief the Soviet Union’s political and economic crisis and the intense struggle over its future.

And, almost as if trying to force the crisis toward a resolution, Shevardnadze’s charges threw into question the continuity of this country’s foreign policy and domestic reforms alike, demanding that they be strengthened immediately if the government really intends to pursue perestroika.

As Shevardnadze analyzed the political struggle sweeping the country, the “reactionary forces” have gathered enough strength in recent months to frustrate the next reforms and, taking advantage of the deepening crisis that has resulted, are even able to dictate policy to Gorbachev, who had begun to compromise.

“A dictatorship is advancing,” Shevardnadze told the Congress of People’s Deputies. “I am saying this with full responsibility. No one knows what kind of dictatorship it will be, who will personify it, what kind of dictator he will be and what kind of regime it will become. . . . Let this be my contribution, my protest against the advance of dictatorship.”

This was one of Gorbachev’s closest political allies speaking, a friend since the late 1950s, a supporter of perestroika from the beginning.

But what he had seen from the innermost councils of the Kremlin was the mounting pressure from the right becoming the dominant force in Soviet politics, overwhelming Gorbachev’s tired reformers and forcing the president himself to yield.

“Unless people rise up to defend democratic gains, Shevardnadze believes, a dictatorship is very near,” his spokesman, Vitaly I. Churkin, told reporters later Thursday. “Only the people can prevent dictatorial elements from coming to power.”

Shevardnadze’s fear was not that Gorbachev himself would become a dictator, though his already considerable powers will be enhanced by constitutional amendments next week, but that the “reactionary forces” were already putting such heavy pressure on him as to usurp those powers.

And, perhaps most frightening of all, Shevardnadze felt himself powerless to hold back this political flow and prevent his old friend from compromising perestroika.

“He believed that to take such a decisive step and compel people to think would be a more effective warning than to remain in the government working as a minister to develop democracy,” said Churkin, one of his most trusted aides.

This made the break with Gorbachev even more difficult. The two men had discussed the political situation recently, according to informed political sources here, and where Shevardnadze apparently saw a rightist threat, Gorbachev saw political interests that needed to be satisfied.

The “reactionary forces,” which Shevardnadze distinguished from “conservatives,” clearly include many army officers but also members of the Communist Party apparat, government bureaucracy and military-industrial complex. But they now have a broader popular following as well, and in parliamentary terms their principal group, Soyuz, or Union, claims about a quarter of the deputies.

Over the autumn, the right has been increasingly in the ascendancy here, and the Communist Party and government, from Gorbachev down, have been forced increasingly onto the defensive.

Shevardnadze’s resignation--warning against the upsurge from the right, implicitly criticizing Gorbachev for failing to resist it and seeking to rally the left to back him--brought into the open a struggle that, despite its importance, has been hidden and indirect.

“When life and circumstances require, one has to muster courage and audacity, Shevardnadze believes, and take the step, no matter how hard and tough it is,” Churkin said of the minister’s decision to break with Gorbachev on a fundamental political issue.

As the country’s multiple crises--economic, ethnic and political--have deepened, conservatives have pressed for sterner action, accusing Gorbachev of being indecisive and of destroying the old system before the new one was built. Even liberals have joined in calls for a “strong hand” to lead the government.

The virtual collapse recently of key segments of the economic system put conservatives in a “we-told-you-so” position--and forced reformers to retreat from plans for the rapid development of a market economy to replace the old system of state ownership, central planning and government management.

Conservatives won the ouster this month of Vadim V. Bakatin, the progressive interior minister, and earlier forced Alexander N. Yakovlev, the liberal architect of much of perestroika, onto the political sidelines. At the same time, the new, hard-line interior minister, the defense minister and the head of the KGB, the security police, each went on television, on Gorbachev’s “instructions,” to outline new law-and-order measures.

On Wednesday, Gorbachev responded to demands at the Congress for tougher action to quell ethnic unrest, saying he may be forced to impose emergency rule or take control of troubled regions from local authorities.

In an appeal to Gorbachev earlier Wednesday, 53 military leaders and cultural figures called on him, “as the respected leader of the nation, to stop the chaos and prevent the collapse of the state by using all the power and authority left to you.”

What appears to have been crucial for Shevardnadze, however, was the vote on Monday by the Congress not to debate a no-confidence motion on Gorbachev’s leadership. The measure was rejected decisively, but for nearly an hour the president was under furious attack from the right and in worse circumstances might have even been impeached.

“The world survived difficult moments awaiting what button you pushed when voting on the first day of the Congress,” Shevardnadze said in a statement given to deputies. “Now, not only by pushing the nuclear button but under an absolutely normal democratic procedure, the fate of the world can be decided in a few minutes. . . . There is only one conclusion--democracy needs protection. . . .

“For me this is a painful matter because I am one of those who, together with Mikhail Gorbachev, started perestroika as the way of democratizing the country. Together with him, I am responsible for everything, not only for the foreign policy. I have a feeling of personal fault when I see how our newly born and still weak democracy is being deformed.”

Gorbachev said he understood Shevardnadze’s motives, though he condemned the move. “He believes that this (reactionaries’) assault has developed a planned character as a series of attacks,” Gorbachev said. “He found it necessary to resort to the most acute forms to disrupt this assault and stop those wanting to exploit the situation to draw us away from the line we are pursuing.”

There was clear emotion in Shevardnadze’s speech--as in Gorbachev’s response--but there was also clear calculation by a master of political tactics who has the experience of five years of the toughest international negotiations.

If Shevardnadze’s calculations are correct, Gorbachev will now find himself under public pressure to demonstrate his mastery of the political scene by resisting pressure from the right and reaffirming his commitment to further reforms.

In accusing Soviet liberals of having “taken to the hills” rather than defending and expanding the reforms, Shevardnadze has sought to rally them back, pulling them out of their feuds and bickering.

In resigning in the midst of a foreign policy debate--a review that included Soviet-American cooperation in the Persian Gulf crisis, German reunification, arms reduction in Central Europe and relations with Eastern Europe--Shevardnadze has similarly put pressure on Gorbachev to reaffirm his commitment to the new Soviet foreign policy.

Even if Shevardnadze relents and remains as foreign minister or accepts a new post in the government, his resignation Thursday before the Congress of People’s Deputies will have made a political point of considerable consequence, but at a great personal cost.

Shevardnadze was clearly hoping to gain much more leverage from his resignation, for much greater measures are required to pull the country out of its multiple crises, though there is little agreement on what to do.

“Shevardnadze believes the correct course was chosen at the party congress last summer,” a former Shevardnadze aide remarked Thursday, “and what is needed now is the gumption to follow that course. But, clearly, our economic crisis has worsened since then, and the political struggle is more acute as a result. . . .

“These are issues that concern the fate of this country, and they cannot be left to the far right. For us they are matters of life and death. That is why Shevardnadze wants to shock people out of thinking that a ‘strong hand’ will cure all.”

Shevardnadze’s Major Achievements 1. Arms Control Moscow accepted the principle of parity, which generally meant bigger arms cut by the East than by the West. The result was a dramatic speed-up in arms talk. East-West Relations The huge improvement in the East-West climate was seen in a statement at last month’s summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that NATO and the Warsaw Pact no longer regard one another as enemies. 2. Eastern Europe Reversing the “Brezhnev Doctrine,”the Soivet Union last year allowed its six Warsaw Pact allies to adopt Western-style democracy after four decades of totalitarian rule by Soviet-manipulated Communist parties. 3. Germany Moscow consented to the reunification of Germany broadly on Western terms which specified the whole country would be a member of NATO. 4. Regional Conflicts The Krelim removed a major irritant in relations with the West in 1989 by withdrawing the last of its 100,000 troops who had fought against anti-Communist guerrillas in Afghanistan for nineyears.