Profile : Kremlin’s Rightist Tilt Can Be Linked to Soyuz : The group is made up of duly elected members of the Soviet Parliament. They say they’re trying to prevent the breakup of the Soviet Union. And they warn Gorbachev that he had better listen.

One is a sharp-tongued army colonel who says that if he were Soviet president, he would show President Bush who’s boss by putting Soviet strategic weapons on alert.

A comrade belongs to a shady reactionary group that tried to overthrow the democratically elected government in the Baltic republic of Latvia. A third is committed to fighting for the rights of ethnic Russians in places where they are a minority and branded “Soviet occupiers.”

These are not the members of a freakish political cult, but duly elected lawmakers and leaders of Soyuz, or “Union,” the Soviet Parliament’s right-wing faction, which is steadily gaining power and influence inside the Kremlin.

“We are very strong,” Soyuz Chairman Yuri V. Blokhin, an ethnic Russian from Moldova, declared in an interview. “If (President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev wants to be successful, he better be with us.”

A former bureaucrat from the state planning agency who now battles “discrimination” against Russians by new nationalist leaders in Moldova and other rebel Soviet republics, Blokhin says Soyuz simply wants to protect “equal rights” and prevent the breakup of the Soviet Union.

But at least one of Soyuz’s political opponents says the group has been plotting to remove all liberals from top posts in the government in order to force the country into a period of authoritarian rule.

Blokhin and others in Soyuz prefer having a controlled Gorbachev as president to an uncontrolled Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian republic president who last week called for Gorbachev’s resignation.

They deeply despise Yeltsin for what they see as his personal ambition and efforts to weaken Gorbachev only in order to strengthen himself. “Yeltsin is deeply mistaken,” Blokhin says. “He will not get strong republics if there’s no strong union.”

However, one Soyuz leader, Victor Alksnis, openly declares that he wants a “national salvation committee” to take over the country in place of Gorbachev and the democratically elected parliaments.

Such a committee will use the army and KGB spying and security apparatus, he added, to bring order to the Soviet Union and revive its economy. Ideology, he says, would not be important: “I’m not interested in all those ‘isms’--communism, capitalism, et cetera.

“For the last five years, it has been graphically demonstrated that Gorbachev has no program of perestroika, “ Alksnis said, referring to the label Gorbachev uses for his plans to remake society. “He has a program of destruction, but no program of construction.

“In 1985, Gorbachev was handed control of a country in a pre-crisis situation, now we are in a catastrophic situation . . . and Gorbachev is at fault,” Alksnis charged. “Civil war is already going on in Azerbaijan and Georgia, and there’s a cold civil war in the Baltics and Moldova.”

The national salvation committee, he contended, could succeed where Gorbachev and the Communist Party have failed.

Alksnis, 40, a charismatic member of the Soviet Parliament who often stirs controversy in the halls of the Kremlin, acknowledged in an interview that he belongs to the All-Latvian Public Salvation Committee, whose failed bid at seizing power in that tiny Baltic republic in January triggered a clash in which five people were killed during an attack by Soviet interior troops on Latvia’s Interior Ministry.

Alksnis is not the only Soyuz member who supports Draconian measures to prevent the breakup of the Soviet Union and safeguard its position as a superpower.

“Our goal is to preserve the Soviet Union and fight against those forces that are pulling our country apart--to fight against nationalism, separatism, Zionism, oppression of human rights and policy-makers who put nationalist values above general human values,” Col. Nikolai S. Petrushenko, another high-profile member of the group, said. “Soyuz’s tactics toward Gorbachev are to push him to resolute and tough measures with the aim of preserving the union.”

To keep the Soviet Union intact, “I’m in favor of using the toughest measures, including the army,” Petrushenko added in a recent interview.

The balding, hefty, 40-year-old colonel often takes the podium at the legislature to call for a more hawkish foreign policy as well.

“If I were to become Soviet president,” Petrushenko said in ire, “I would not allow President Bush to talk to me the way he talks to the current Soviet president. Believe me, Bush would have to take me into consideration because I would put strategic forces on alert just to accomplish this aim.”

Soyuz’s calls for greater discipline inside the country and a firmer stance in foreign policy appeal to many.

Already more than 700 of the 2,250 members of the national Parliament have pledged their support of Soyuz, leaders say. Their opponents agree that the faction has become the largest group in the Parliament other than the Communist Party, whose members do not vote as a bloc and belong to both the liberal and reactionary wings.

Even Yegor K. Ligachev, who was Gorbachev’s main conservative rival until he was tossed off the Politburo and into retirement last summer, said recently in an interview that he has long been a member of Soyuz. He declined to give details.

“It was easy to attract members,” Alksnis said. “The most important political problem today is the disintegration of our state, so we gathered together those people who are worried about the fate of our state.”

Soyuz leaders say they organized on their own initiative but admit that some military leaders have encouraged them and that large enterprises support them financially. They refuse to give names.

But Yuri N. Afanasyev, a leading advocate of radical reform, said most liberals believe the group has backers in high places.

“This group clearly expresses the interests of the military-industrial complex and the army,” Afanasyev said. “These are the forces that are most interested in preserving the Soviet Union as a centralized, unitary government.”

The bloc’s leaders said the concept of Soyuz was born a little more than a year ago when a small group of lawmakers were talking in one of their rooms at the Hotel Moskva near Red Square, where many of them stay during the legislative session.

The conservatives, most of whom live in republics where politics are now dominated by strong nationalist movements, were discussing how to unite their forces, and Alksnis suggested they start a formal parliamentary faction.

A handful of activists worked on membership drives, and by the time the faction officially registered in February, 1990, more than 100 lawmakers had joined. Since then the group has grown steadily and now has members representing 30 nationalities and all 15 constituent Soviet republics.

The group surged to the forefront of national politics last November when Alksnis gave a speech in the Supreme Soviet, or national legislature, demanding that Gorbachev make a “radical turnaround” within 30 days, failing which Alksnis would introduce a formal motion of no-confidence in the Soviet president.

Both Interior Minister Vadim V. Bakatin and Foreign Minster Eduard A. Shevardnadze, two leading proponents of change in Gorbachev’s Kremlin, left their posts after Soyuz leaders clamored for their resignations.

Bakatin, who was fired by Gorbachev and replaced with a hard-line communist and former KGB general, said he knew his days were numbered when Soyuz protested his decision to allow the republics’ governments to take control of local police and law enforcement.

In an interview in last week’s edition of the radical Ogonyok magazine, Bakatin said the Interior Ministry’s new makeup had interfered with Soyuz’s purported plan to rely on the ministry’s troops in their “political struggle” to take control in republics that favor independence.

Petrushenko, Alksnis and other Soyuz members had planned to use these troops to remove all liberals from the presidential team and to force Gorbachev into declaring direct rule by Moscow in the “separatist” republics, Bakatin said.

Shevardnadze was particularly hated by the radical right for presiding over the collapse of the former Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. He quit Dec. 20, warning of an impending dictatorship.

But while liberals fiercely criticize Gorbachev for grabbing too much power from the Parliament and using it to rule by decree, Soyuz cheers the Soviet president for his new style of “leadership.”

“That Gorbachev is acting--this in itself is good,” Blokhin said. “It’s better to act than to sit on your hands.”

Soyuz vehemently opposes the nationalist parliaments in the three Baltic republics--Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and Moldova, but its greatest enemies are Yeltsin and “Democratic Russia,” an umbrella movement that combines all liberal and progressive forces in the largest Soviet republic.

“The No. 1 opponent of Soyuz is Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin,” Petrushenko said. “He’s a political crook and charlatan.”

Democratic Russia similarly opposes Soyuz, blaming it in part for the rollback of reform that has been taking place over the past few months.

“Soyuz is pulling Gorbachev backward all the time,” Afanasyev, one of the founders of Democratic Russia, said. “The result is very negative.”

Afanasyev, also a member of the left-wing Inter-regional Group in the national Parliament, said Gorbachev’s policies reflected the influence of liberals until late summer, when the balance began shifting in favor of the conservative bloc.

Soyuz and the other reactionary powers--including the military-industrial complex, Communist Party functionaries and Soviet army generals--had consolidated power by early fall, Afanasyev said. They were compelled to combine forces when they saw that the radical “500-day” plan for a quick transition to a market economy was being supported by Gorbachev.

“When this was presented as a possible government program, the conservatives saw that they were threatened with mortal danger,” Afanasyev said. Last September, Gorbachev unexpectedly announced the 500-day plan.

Soyuz can indisputably claim a following among the Soviet citizenry, but the size of its popular support is difficult to estimate because there have not been any major public opinion polls.

“About 90% of the people I meet support us,” said Alksnis, who frequently gives speeches at universities, institutes and enterprises. “The idea of the state is dear to everyone--everyone is more or less a patriot.”

“A part of the population certainly supports them,” Afanasyev said, acknowledging that “masses” of his countrymen are receptive to Soyuz’s message. “The self-consciousness of being part of an empire is very strong in the mass psychology here. Totalitarianism is in the minds and hearts of many people. People are so used to waiting for everything from the government that independent people do not exist.”

The New Voices of the Soviet Right

“For the last five years, it has been graphically demonstrated that Gorbachev has no program of perestroika . He has a program of destruction, but no program of construction.”

--Viktor Alksnis, a member of Soviet Parliament who belongs to Soyuz

“If I were to become Soviet president, I would not allow President Bush to talk to me the way he talks to the current Soviet president. Believe me, Bush would have to take me into consideration because I would put strategic forces on alert just to accomplish this aim.”

--Col. Nikolai S. Petrushenko, a Soviet Parliament member who also belongs to Soyuz.

“We are very strong. If (President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev wants to be successful, he better be with us.”

--Yuri V. Blokhin, chairman of Soyuz