Populism vs. Tanks: Soviet Forces at Odds : Yeltsin must try to overcome the people’s apathy

President Bush tried to telephone Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union on Tuesday. When he not unexpectedly failed to get through to the deposed national president, he called President Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation instead. Soon after, Britain’s Prime Minister John Major did the same. The calls were intended to underscore Western sympathy and support for the resistance being shown to Monday’s coup d’etat by retrograde military, Interior Ministry and Communist Party officials. Foreign sympathy is not usually an effective barrier against tanks and paratroopers commanded by ruthless and determined men. But in the larger scheme of things, the blessing the key Western leaders gave to the cause of political legitimacy in the SovietUnion is important--both to remind the junta that its actions are held to be illegal and unacceptable, and for Moscow’s future relations with the West.

Yeltsin has emerged as the leading figure in the resistance to the right-wing power grab. As the popularly elected president of the largest Soviet republic, he has a claim to political primacy--and legitimacy--that no other national figure can challenge. Even Gorbachev himself has never faced the test of a free popular election. Yeltsin has bolstered his claim to leadership by courageously calling for a general strike of indefinite duration to protest and resist the coup. More than ever, he has emerged as the likely successor to the generally unpopular Gorbachev, if the coup fails and the opportunity for popularly based government returns.

One unanswered question out of many about this putsch is why the coup-makers didn’t move immediately to arrest Yeltsin and other probable resisters. So far as is known, only Gorbachev and several of his key aides were seized at the outset, leaving free--at least temporarily--hundreds, if not thousands, of readily identifiable politicians, intellectuals, journalists and other vocal supporters of democratic rule.

This omission could indicate that the junta’s decision to seize power came so suddenly that little time was left for careful planning. But that seems unlikely. Rumors of a right-wing plot have circulated for many months; Eduard Shevardnadze, who sees this week’s events as the “beginning of civil war,” noted the threat as long ago as last December, when he resigned as foreign minister. A more plausible explanation may be that the junta thought that by deposing Gorbachev, moving to nullify the new union treaty with its plans to decentralize power, and muzzling the press, Yeltsin and other opposition figures could be cowed into line and left only to complain ineffectually.

That hasn’t happened--at least not yet. Instead, there have been signs of noisy popular resistance to the takeover in Moscow and Leningrad, as well as signs of possible splits in the ranks of the military. A few small units seem to have rallied to Yeltsin. Perhaps more important are reports--for now not conclusive--of deep divisions among military officers over whether using force to support reactionary domestic policies can be justified.

Yet, for all their apparent inefficiencies and clumsiness, the coup leaders in the end may prove not to have miscalculated, at least in assessing the strength of the resistance. They have acted to take control of a country almost entirely lacking in traditions of representative government, a country whose people--as a recent Times Mirror poll found--prefer democracy to authoritarianism only by a paper-thin 51% margin, a country that in periods of internal strife and uncertainty has always accepted dictatorial rule. The junta promises to impose order in a time of growing troubles. Yeltsin upholds the banner of reform and progress against the forces of reaction. In this contest, sadly, history may not favor the righteous.