Lenin’s Heirs Take a Giant Leap Backwards : How can rightists seriously pledge to keep perestroika moving?

The right-wing junta that seized power in the Soviet Union on Monday characteristically began its rule with a self-justifying lie.

It had moved to make Vice President Gennady I. Yanayev acting president, Resolution No. 1 said, because President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was unable, “for health reasons,” to perform the duties of his office. It went on to cite the Soviet constitution to give a patina of legality to its proclamation of a state of emergency and its order that “all power in the country” be transferred to a committee dominated by the secret police, the interior ministry and the military. The traditional wielders of power who have watched in frustration as their power eroded over the six years of the Gorbachev era, the Old Guard that has been forced repeatedly to retreat but has never surrendered, had mounted a stunning counterattack to reclaim the commanding heights of Soviet life.

In 1917 Lenin and his minority Bolshevik faction carried out a coup d’etat to overturn the results of a democratic election. In 1991 their heirs have staged a coup that throttles the Soviet Union’s infant democracy and could presage a return to political repression and crippling central controls.

The junta has bid for popular support by pledging to restore order across a country where “chaos and anarchy threaten . . . lives and security,” and to rapidly increase supplies of food, energy and housing. But the coup makers, if in fact they believe their own promises, will quickly find what the unendingly misled Soviet people already know: All the decrees in the world are insufficient to squeeze more food or coal or apartments out of an economy enfeebled by decades of misallocated investment and rotten with mismanagement and corruption. The men at the top have changed; the Soviet Union’s massive problems endure.

In words intended to soothe even if they don’t persuade, the new leadership suggests that it will hold on to the best of Gorbachev’s perestroika ; although the deposed leader had lost most of his early personal popularity, many of his reforms remain valued. But the idea that the reactionaries who have seized power plan to carry on with market-oriented economic reforms and a liberalized political life seems patently absurd. Their stock in trade is demanding order, discipline, controls. Their view of sound government--we command, you obey--is wholly incompatible with the concepts of free thought, free choice, free expression.

The West, which in this context includes Japan and South Korea, is almost certain now to be even more dubious about loans, credits and investments for the Soviet Union. The doubts are warranted. The hard-faced men who flanked Yanayev at his press conference Monday hardly inspire confidence in their ability to lead the Soviet economy to better and freer days. The doubts can only deepen if recent Soviet cooperativeness in international relations comes to an end. For well over a year now, the hard-liners have been openly critical of Gorbachev’s supposed subservience to the West in foreign policy. The coup-makers have shown they are prepared to risk losing the chance for Western aid and economic integration with Europe. They may be equally willing to drop the conciliatory policies that made possible such achievements as arms reduction treaties, cooperation in response to Iraq’s outlawry and a potential Mideast peace conference.

Coming days will bring further clues as to what the junta intends, at home and abroad. Coming days should also show whether Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin’s bold stand against reaction can be maintained. The coup d’etat in Moscow has been a momentous shock for all the world, and it will take time for its full consequences and meaning to emerge. What’s clear for now is that the Soviet Union has taken a giant leap backwards. There is no telling when it might be able to regain the ground that its new leaders have so quickly abandoned.