‘Chaos, Anarchy Coming,’ Shevardnadze Predicts : Soviet Union: The foreign minister explains the fears that led him to resign. He criticizes Gorbachev rule.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said in an interview published here Wednesday that he had resigned because he could not tolerate the use of force to restore order and cope with the country’s crisis.

Shevardnadze, in his first public comments since resigning Dec. 20, repeated his contention that, notwithstanding the denials of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet Union is sliding rapidly toward a dictatorship by “reactionary forces.”

He also criticized Gorbachev’s government as little more than a talk shop where problems are endlessly debated, decisions are slowly made and laws are never enforced.

Once one of Gorbachev’s closest allies in the Soviet leadership, Shevardnadze effectively broke with the Soviet president in an effort to warn the nation of a possible return to its totalitarian past. His resignation has been widely debated and it clearly constituted a major political setback for Gorbachev.

“Everybody agrees that the country is in a crisis--chaos and anarchy are coming,” Shevardnadze told the avant-garde newspaper Moscow News. “At the same time, many people deny the possibility of a dictatorship.

“But I believe that, if the country cannot break out of this present crisis, dictatorship is inevitable. . . . Am I dramatizing? No, I don’t think so.”

What he fears most, Shevardnadze said, is further use of internal security troops and regular army units to suppress the growing unrest around the country.

“Today, the thesis about the need for discipline and order is repeated all the time,” he continued. “They are indeed indispensable. But unfortunately, discipline and order are associated in the minds of many, many people with the use of force.

“I am not certain that presidential rule or any other punitive measures, from whatever direction they come, can be a means of resolving our current problems.”

He recalled the heavy civilian casualties last January in Baku, the capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, and in April, 1989, in Tbilisi, the capital of his native Georgia. Shevardnadze implied that the mood in the government is now such that stronger measures would be used in dealing with all forms of unrest.

Gorbachev stated last month that he would not hesitate to impose presidential rule--thus removing locally elected governments--to declare a state of emergency in case of unrest and to use internal security forces and military units to restore order.

Under mounting pressure from the right, including the Soviet military, Gorbachev has taken an increasingly tougher line on law and order, warning that the growing unrest threatens the country’s political and economic reforms.

On this, he and Shevardnadze apparently have fundamental differences.

“It is very hard for me to reconcile myself with the thought that violence, lawlessness and reprisals are still acceptable despite our democratization,” Shevardnadze said.

He instead proposed political reconciliation, an approach that Moscow has used successfully in international conflicts and now underlies Soviet foreign policy.

Shevardnadze warned that, unless the Soviet Union emerges from its present crisis peacefully, its international standing will quickly decline. Any use of force would undercut the moral authority that Moscow now has in the world as a result of its reforms at home and the changes it has made in its foreign policy, he added.

Before his resignation, Shevardnadze came under particularly sharp criticism from conservatives on foreign policy issues: the “loss” of Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, the working alliance with the United States on the Persian Gulf crisis. He remains particularly bitter that Gorbachev did nothing to defend him.

“Eventually I realized,” he told Moscow News, “that if the destabilization of the country continued and the process of democratization stopped, then it would be impossible to follow the previous foreign policy course.

“The development of events could lead to a repeat of what happened in Tbilisi or Baku. What would be the good of talking about new thinking then?

“What is the way out?” Shevardnadze continued, speaking with Yegor Yakovlev, the editor of Moscow News and a prominent radical. “People and nations must unite. And, first and foremost, democratic forces must do this. For the sake of preserving democracy, those (Soviet republics that have declared their sovereignty) . . . (must work) for our common salvation.”

In his resignation speech to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament, Shevardnadze accused reformers of “hiding in the bushes” and failing to defend and promote the gains under perestroika, as Gorbachev’s program of political, economic and social reforms is called.

“The step I took in resigning was the simplest; perhaps naive, but honest,” he said. “It was meant to tell the Congress about the real danger. Unfortunately, the majority at the Congress were in a mood to think differently.”

Shevardnadze angrily characterized the present Soviet government as increasingly one of talk, rather than action, despite the enormity of the country’s crisis.

“The trouble is that many of us have simply stopped doing business,” he said. “We are constantly busy at congresses, sessions, meetings, plenums instead of making decisions and working--officials, ministers, even the president. We adopt laws that nobody carries out.

“Of course, today, it is harder for the president than anyone else, (for) he was the first to show great courage. It is very hard for him now.”

Shevardnadze said that he would like to start a foreign policy association in the Soviet Union to involve more people in the formulation of foreign policy and to inform the public on its goals.

Vitaly I. Churkin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Gorbachev is nearing a decision on Shevardnadze’s successor, implying that the nomination would probably be put before the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, for confirmation next week.

Gorbachev, interviewed last week by the Asahi Shimbun in Japan, said that he wants to keep Shevardnadze in the leadership despite his criticism.

“We are old friends and we cooperate a lot and fruitfully. . . ,” Gorbachev said, according to an account of the interview published by Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper. “I take him as my close comrade.

“We have no differences in our views. I know about the speculation that his statement on resigning was a signal that Gorbachev is changing his course. This is not serious. . . .

“I think Shevardnadze will do a lot more useful things. I am for Shevardnadze continuing his active participation in the process of perestroika. “