Soviet Emigres Feel the Pain, Despair Over Turn of Events : Reaction: Relatives frantically search for information. Hopes for reforms and further emigration are dashed.

From Southern California’s synagogues, Orthodox churches and immigrant enclaves, Soviet emigres who had gained the most under glasnost-- those from the Baltic states, Jews, Armenians--uttered a collective cry of despair and dread as they learned of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s ouster.

As they frantically searched for news and information from the Soviet Union, many of them said they feared for the fate of their homeland and of their families. Jewish leaders said they were concerned that the reforms that have allowed thousands of Jews to leave the Soviet Union will come to an end.

“It is terrible, a tragedy with unpredictable consequences,” said Kiev native Bella Sitnyakovsky, a Jewish emigre who moved to West Los Angeles nearly 3 1/2 years ago.

“We cannot say we don’t love our country. We love our country. It is our love and our pain. . . . What can I tell you? My heart is tearing in pieces.”

Like thousands of Soviet emigres throughout Southern California, Sitnyakovsky spent hours dialing and redialing the telephone in a futile effort to reach family and friends back home.

Others sought spiritual comfort. At St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Los Angeles, more than 200 worshipers crowded into the pews for an impromptu prayer service.

“They started coming at about 9 a.m. and kept coming all day,” Father Stephen Hallick said.

For Jews, Armenians, Lithuanians and others, the greatest fear is that the rise to power of Communist Party hard-liners will shut the door on emigration and independence movements while unleashing new waves of anti-Semitism and ethnic hatred.

“As Armenians, we were disenchanted with Gorbachev to begin with, but I’m afraid that the new rulers who have come will be worse,” said the Rev. Vatche Hovsepin, archbishop for the Western diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and spiritual leader to about 200,000 people of Armenian descent in Southern California. “They have called out the military but fortunately, they haven’t shot anyone yet.”

Jewish leaders credited Gorbachev’s reform policies of glasnost and perestroika with a religious awakening in the Soviet Union in recent years. After Gorbachev came to power in 1985, decades of religious persecution ended; Soviet Jews finally being allowed to study Hebrew and practice Judaism.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in West Los Angeles, visited the Soviet Union in 1988 to speak on the Holocaust. He said Monday that the Gorbachev-era changes in the Soviet psyche had seemed “profound” and “irreversible”--barring interference by the military.

“Hopefully, we won’t look at (the period of) 1985 to ’91 as the exception,” Cooper said.

In West Hollywood, home to an estimated 5,000 Soviet Jewish immigrants, the talk was of sudden changes in the old country, and the consensus was that little good would come of it.

“These people all have relatives over there and they are worried about them,” said Semyon Urman, 75, as a knot of fellow pensioners listened and nodded at a shady picnic table in Plummer Park.

“Everyone is alarmed, because this committee that took over, they want to put back a new Stalinist system, and even if it won’t be Stalinism like it used to be, we know what dictatorship is all about.”

A trio of Russian folk musicians, visiting Los Angeles as part of a tour, played tunes at the nearby Farmer’s Market. The bass player, Oleg Bernov, 27, wore a T-shirt with the words, “Keep Up the Good Work, Gorby.”

“We came here as tourists,” Bernov said, “but after what happened, maybe we’ll change our minds and stay.”

Alla Kotler is a three-year resident here who is awaiting the arrival of 14 relatives, including an aunt, uncle and cousin, by January. Because emigration always depended on good relations between Moscow and Washington, she said, she is now fearful.

“I got a lot of calls from friends and relatives here, all saying the same thing: There is no way to know what will happen, but it will be nothing good,” Kotler said. “Exactly what, we cannot say.”

In the stores, restaurants and schools of the Fairfax district, nostalgia mixed with a certain amount of realism. Gorbachev had been an honest leader, some said, an unlikely Communist who opened the floodgates of emigration. But the country had suffered under him. Food and manufactured goods vanished from store shelves as the Soviet Union’s old centralized economic system was dismantled without a new one being put in its place.

“Gorbachev did much good and much bad,” said Yfim Moyseyev, 54, owner of the Black Sea restaurant on Fairfax Avenue. “He gave them (the Soviet people) freedom to say what was forbidden, but it might have been better to have given them food instead.”

Looking back, Arkady Voloshin said from behind the counter of his Kashtan grocery store on Santa Monica Boulevard, Gorbachev’s biggest mistake may have been his unpopular campaign against alcoholism and a later attempt at currency reform that deprived many Soviets of their savings.

“You can’t turn off the flow of vodka to the Russian people,” he said. “It’s part of their life. And the currency reform hurt the old people.”

Greetings in Russian filled the cafeteria at Fairfax High School, where 10% of the students are estimated to be emigrants from the Soviet Union. Boisterous teen-agers were happy to see old chums on the first day of the new school term, but they soon settled into quiet, nervous discussion of the developments in their native land.

“My grandma is there and she’s supposed to come here in two months, but now we don’t know,” said Vitaly Sklyarenko, 16, who moved here from the Ukraine two years ago.

By keeping track of Soviet politics through newspapers and television, Sklyarenko said it became clear to him over the last few months that Gorbachev was in trouble.

Renata Chechelnitskaya was also cynical.

“I want the president who can make clothes, who can make food, who can help my people,” said the 16-year-old who immigrated just last year. “With Gorbachev, no one can buy anything. . . . I am afraid that this war might happen, but I can’t believe it, I can’t understand it. I want for my country the best.”

George Bulow, a Russian who had interpreted for Gorbachev when he visited Stanford University, said the news of the president’s ouster has shocked and saddened Soviet emigres in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“He really has a magnetism,” Bulow said. “I was under his spell. I am personally sorry he is to leave because I don’t think anyone can do a better job.”

Southland residents planning to travel to the Soviet Union were thrown into a state of confusion. Major travel agencies said no trips have yet been canceled but that the situation could change at any time.

“We’re taking it an hour at a time and see what happens,” said Bhavani Chandramouli, marketing manager for New York-based General Tours Inc.

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson, Paul Feldman, Janet Rae-Dupree, Phil Sneiderman and Michael Connelly in Los Angeles; Philip Hager, Richard C. Paddock and Dan Morain in San Francisco; Jonathan Gaw in San Diego, and Thuan Le and Kristina Lindgren in Orange County.