Too Much Democracy, Not Enough Order : Summit: The course of U.S.-Soviet relations remains unchartered, because the U.S.S.R., under one flag, may not have a future.

Last week in Moscow, both Mikhail S. Gorbachev and George Bush held forth on the new era that has settled in because of “the new Soviet revolution,” to use President Bush’s words. They were quite right. The new era opens up dazzling prospects. But one aspect makes the task of surmising the future more difficult than it ever was amid the icebergs of the Cold War--the fate of the Soviet Union.

This is why the main task that Bush assigned himself before his departure for Moscow--to lay the course for U.S.-Soviet relations in the ‘90s--has not been resolved.

It is now obvious that the topic of disarmament in our relations will be replaced by U.S. attempts, no matter how modest, to help the Soviet Union on its uncharted road to a market economy. Equally obvious--and this has been demonstrated by the Moscow visit--is that the Soviet leadership will do its best to be politically useful to America. Assisting Bush and his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, in their bid for a Middle East settlement is one way of doing it.

This, naturally, will further consolidate the global influence of the only remaining superpower, already on the rise after the Persian Gulf victory. Moscow will also meet Washington halfway on the touchy issue of Soviet aid to Cuba, even though it will make feeble attempts to save face with its allies--whose numbers are fast approaching zero. No problem with surmising the future here.

The seismic convulsions of recent years have created favorable conditions for establishment of a new world order. But one snag remains: This new order is impossible without establishing an equally new order in the Soviet Union. The trouble is, having cleared the way for new solutions of old problems, the Soviet Union has become a problem much more important and pressing than, say, a Middle East settlement or conflicts involving Cuba or Afghanistan. To get an idea of what might eventually happen here, try multiplying recent events in Yugoslavia by the size of the Soviet Union’s territory and population.

When we say the “new order” in the Soviet Union, we need to emphasize both words. The “new” means democratic. “Order” means a functioning and effective power based on a new balance of prerogatives and duties between the center and the republics, or nine of them, at least. Alas, the Soviet Union has a lot of democracy and no order, just as it has a lot of rubles and no goods.

One illustration of this overflow of democracy are the political souvenirs that Bush’s partners in Moscow prepared for his visit. Gorbachev, having repulsed conservative attacks, forced the Central Committee plenum to drop Communist dogmas in favor of social-democratic ones. Boris N. Yeltsin went farther, banishing the Communist Party from factories, state bodies and law-enforcement organs--precisely where the roots of the party’s influence are.

The situation with order is more difficult. The U.S. President saw two different flags fluttering over two adjoining buildings in the Kremlin. One waved over Gorbachev’s headquarters, the other over Yeltsin’s. Under the totalitarian regime, not a hair could stir across one-sixth of the globe without Moscow’s permission. Today, its dictates are, by and large, ignored as new seats of power keep forming within the country, and the two main powers face each another right in the Kremlin. Optimists fervently hope this interregnum--or, more precisely, vacuum of power--will end one of these days, supplanted by new stability in a democratically reformed Soviet Union.

Pessimists justify their glumness by citing Russia’s historical tradition and the continuing absence of a modern political culture, whose first shoots are beginning to break through the psychological concrete that the one-party past had laid. Looking at the two flags flying over the Kremlin, the pessimists mutter about the proverbial two bears who cannot live in the same den.

Now the Russian bear is no longer the propaganda bogey to frighten the public in the West. But if Soviets adapt this Cold War image to domestic needs, we can confidently predict that as long as there are two bears in the same den, we will have neither democracy nor order and very probably no peace.

Unfortunately, elements of this rivalry surfaced during Bush’s visit. This was all the more regrettable, because in weeks leading up to the summit, cooperation prevailed as all sides moved toward the new Union Treaty within the framework of the “nine plus one” formula.

As everybody knows, Yeltsin ostentatiously turned down Gorbachev’s invitation to sit in during one of the rounds of talks with Bush. A trifle? Perhaps. But it underscores the daunting problem of the Soviet Union’s future. According to the blueprints of its architects, who are ready to pay any price to get rid of the old totalitarian structures, the Soviet Union is to become an unprecedented combination of two-tier sovereignties, with the republics under the umbrella of the Union. Yeltsin’s refusal to sit under Gorbachev’s chairmanship is convincing proof this is a stillborn idea.

The U.S. attitude toward all this is perfectly understandable. Washington does not want to become a “part of the problem.” Before and during his visit to Moscow, Bush did some clever political maneuvering. He showed deference for Gorbachev’s status as national leader and paid tribute to his historical deeds. And Bush met individually with Yeltsin who, in American eyes, lays a stronger claim to the title of a true democrat because he severed his ties with the Communist Party and then won democratic elections in which millions took part.

During his visit, Bush did not make a single wrong step in the minefield of Soviet politics. However, he has not received a clear answer to what will happen tomorrow to a power that has signed a historic arms-control treaty with the United States but retains the lion’s share of its nuclear arsenal. In the early ‘80s, Bush came here three times to take part in the funeral ceremonies of three successive Soviet leaders. This time, the talk was not about the death of a human being--it was about the life or death of a great power. So what was his visit--a mourning session or a birthday party?