COLUMN ONE : New Word to Soviets: ‘Jobless’ : Hundreds of thousands have been caught off guard as the country moves toward a free market economy. Reforms could put 30 million out of work in the next few years.

The rumors of a layoff had spread around the sales floors of Sverdlovsk Central Department Store for weeks. But Svetlana V. Barysheva was confident she would not be a victim.

“We were warned about the staff reductions but I didn’t think my job was at risk,” said Barysheva, who recently lost the only job she has ever had in the store’s first big layoff. “When you’re accustomed to working in the same place, it really throws you.”

Barysheva, 23, is one of an increasing number of Soviet workers who suddenly are out of work as their government’s economic reforms eliminate the job security that had been guaranteed by the centrally planned, socialist economic system. Now, as the country moves toward an economic system based on the forces of supply and demand, people are learning a negative side of the free market.

Today, the Soviet Union will start registering the jobless and paying unemployment compensation for the first time since 1930, when dictator Josef Stalin announced that the last unemployed Soviet citizen had just gotten a job.

“The battle for socialism has achieved the complete elimination of unemployment in the U.S.S.R.,” the Communist Party newspaper Pravda declared on Nov. 7, 1930.

But now, a wave of layoffs has already started across the country, catching hundreds of thousands of people like Barysheva off guard. Although there are no exact figures yet on the number of unemployed, specialists’ estimates range from 2 million to 7 million. Some have said as many as 12 million people are already jobless nationwide.

The state labor department, trade union leaders and economists agree that the number of jobless will grow. Some specialists predict that it could soar as high as 30 million in the next few years.

“Americans are accustomed to unemployment,” said Viktor B. Supyan, a Soviet specialist in American social and economic problems. “I can’t say it’s simple for an American to be unemployed--surely it’s not. But Soviet people have long been taught to believe that the last unemployed person in our country was in 1930. Because of this, all Soviet people felt certain that, despite all their problems, they would have the right to work. Now, all of a sudden, people can no longer be secure about their jobs. This is a big psychological problem.”

State-owned companies, which often had many more employees than necessary but which have enjoyed government subsidies, must now earn a profit or close, so they are firing their extra employees and giving raises to those remaining to give them extra incentive.

“Many enterprises had extra workers,” Supyan said. “But the managers were not allowed to release them. Now that they do have this right, we’re expecting a lot of unemployed.”

The most likely candidates for layoffs? Experts say they are women, men older than 55, discharged military personnel, refugees who have fled their homes because of ethnic strife and all workers at unprofitable factories.

In Moscow, white-collar government workers have been hardest hit. But in industrial cities, factory workers also are losing jobs as businesses shut or shrink staffs to save money, personnel specialists at state employment bureaus said.

In Sverdlovsk, accountants and bookkeepers are in demand. But there is no work for sales clerks because state stores are making drastic personnel cuts and there are not yet enough private stores to employ those who are laid off.

During the three months Barysheva has been jobless, the state employment bureau in her region has sent her to only one interview, at a local bookstore. She returned to the bureau discouraged.

“The manager said he wants someone who is totally inexperienced, with none of the bad habits of lazy Soviet salesgirls,” Barysheva told an employment counselor. “Besides, they say they’ll probably have a layoff at the end of the year. I’ll be the first candidate. Do I need this?”

The employment counselor, Maria V. Bekhtereva, telephoned the bookstore manager and found out that the young woman really was rejected because she had been laid off.

“We already have massive layoffs, but no one is used to layoffs yet,” Bekhtereva said. “Everyone thinks that if someone was laid off that means she’s not honest or (is) lazy or a drunkard. They don’t understand that when someone is laid off it’s not her fault.”

Barysheva defiantly rejected suggestions that she return to school to train for another job. “I like my profession--I don’t want to be retrained,” she said. “You know work should give a person satisfaction.”

A few blocks away at the Central Department Store, many of the 1,500 remaining employees worry about their job security. “The bosses say the layoffs are necessary because we have no goods to sell,” said Lyudmila L. Panoba, 22, a clerk in a men’s clothing section. “We’re all afraid we’ll be the next to be cut.”

At another job placement bureau in Sverdlovsk, Emma A. Petrovykh, 53, was trying to get adjusted to the idea of being unemployed for the first time in more than 30 years.

“It was shocking, considering all my experience, that that smart-aleck young boss of mine would have the nerve to lay me off,” said Petrovykh, whose job with a major construction company was to estimate the cost of building projects. “Then I had to work for two months after I had been let go. It was a very disturbing, nervous time.”

Petrovykh said the new layoffs, like the one that cost her her job, show that the country’s economic reforms have gone haywire.

While proponents of the free market argue that some unemployment is necessary if the country wants to pump life into its dying economy, many people are not ready to face the consequences.

“This did not happen in the past,” Petrovykh said. “Before, people cared about the human factor--but now the human factor is gone. A lot of my acquaintances have been laid off already. It’s really wrong what’s happening in our country now.”

But Vyacheslav M. Bednyakov, a 50-year-old Moscow chauffeur who is now unemployed for the third time, argued that the government attitude toward the jobless is no more callous than it ever was. Because the Soviet Union previously claimed to have full employment, no unemployment compensation was paid; the jobless could even be jailed.

Officials do admit that there has always been some hidden unemployment, especially in the Central Asian and Caucasian republics. But “the government has never worried about its unemployed,” said Bednyakov, who works with the Soviet organization that supplies staff for diplomats and other foreigners. “We have an anti-people government.”

In 1978, 1981 and again at the beginning of this year, Bednyakov was laid off when the diplomats he worked for left the country. He received no government aid while unemployed. His family struggled to get by on the modest salary of his wife, a cook in a state cafeteria.

“The first two times I was laid off, I couldn’t even tell anyone about it,” Bednyakov said. “We were too scared to complain. But now it’s even worse. Before, at least UPDK (the state organization that supplied diplomats’ employees) eventually found us new work. Now they say they won’t even help. All my savings are disappearing. When I was unemployed before, I had more hope. Now my hope is gone.”

Government officials contend that employees now will be protected because Parliament has passed strong labor laws and the state has designed a job-placement and retraining network to help those who want to work. The laws require businesses to give employees two months’ notice before layoffs and give them three months’ pay after they are released. Businesses also are required to pay to retrain former employees, if they have not invested money to increase their qualifications over the two previous years.

Under the government program, the unemployed will register at a state employment bureau and, within 10 days, they either must be presented with two options for jobs in their field or must receive unemployment compensation. If applicants turn down the jobs, they get no compensation.

“We want to help those who really want to work,” said Igor Y. Zaslavsky, general director of the Moscow Labor Exchange, the state-sponsored employment bureau. “If they don’t want our help, they can go to hell.”

Some applicants who cannot be placed in jobs in their fields will be sent to state-sponsored retraining centers. They will be paid a stipend while learning a new trade. Others will work temporarily on public works projects.

“The temporary public works projects are designed to limit unemployment while we make a transition to a free-market system,” said Valery F. Kolosov, head of the State Labor Committee’s employment department. “If you just pay a man unemployment compensation, then he degenerates as a person. He’ll become a drug addict, alcoholic or criminal.”

Kolosov rejected the prediction that unemployment will increase quickly, contending that the government’s programs will keep most people busy: “We had 2 million unemployed last year and we do not expect any more. In the future, when the structure of our economy really starts changing, with state enterprises becoming privately owned, competition becoming a factor and unprofitable enterprises closing down, then more people will be laid off. We expect that in 1992, 4 million to 6 million people will be laid off.”

But labor union leaders and state employment workers said that government officials are severely underestimating the scale of unemployment and are financially unprepared for it.

“The mechanisms to help people find new jobs are not functioning yet and there aren’t enough funds to cover all of the people who will need compensations,” said Vasily I. Romanov, deputy director of the Russian Independent Trade Unions. “And this compensation is so small that they guarantee poverty.”

The minimum unemployment compensation will be 160 rubles monthly ($264 a month at the artificially inflated official rate), or less than half what the union says is the minimum a person needs to live. Workers with children will get slightly more.

Nina F. Blinkova, director of the state employment bureau in Moscow’s Kuibyshevsky region, said she dreads today, when the new law takes effect. “We’re supposed to start registering unemployed on July 1, but we don’t even have forms yet,” she said. “I think July 1 is going to be a horribly chaotic day.” Moscow businesses were forced to delay layoffs until today, Blinkova added, so the city’s employment bureaus are preparing for a flood of newly unemployed.

Some victims of the recent layoffs already are discouraged about their chances of finding work.

Valentin S. Romanov, 59, who lost his job because his high-tech military industrial plant is converting to civilian production, has already been turned down at several job interviews.

“I have only a year to go until pension and no one will hire me,” said Romanov, who was hunting for work at a government-sponsored job fair. “Now it looks like my wife will be laid off, too.”

Like many others, Romanov lost more than his job. He also lost his chance to get a larger apartment through his factory. Unless he can get another job that pays as much, he also may face sharp reductions in the comfortable pension he was expecting because the amount of that benefit--as in the United States--is calculated, in part, on a worker’s earnings.

“People are really suffering because of the extreme changes the government is making,” Romanov said, wiping his brow of nervous sweat. “We simply have no more guarantees.”