The Coup That Couldn’t Is a Plus for Perestroika : Gorbachev must be pushed, even prodded, to proceed with his reforms

With the right-wing plotters under arrest or dead and with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev restored to office, what aid and encouragement can the United States and its allies feasibly provide to buttress forces of reform in the Soviet Union?

The answer to that question very much depends on the answer to another: Are Gorbachev and other national leaders ready to move more decisively now to introduce the mechanisms of a market economy, dismantle the suffocating system of central controls and nurture and expand democratic institutions?

The failed coup d’etat provides an unmatched opportunity for resolute action. Right-wing opponents of change have been discredited as never before, while the prestige of such leading reformers as Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin has never stood higher. Gorbachev can no longer plead the imperative of balancing his domestic policies between the demands of reactionaries fighting to hold on to their powers and privileges and the urgings of reformers who see radical change as the only alternative to national collapse. The enemies of change have proven to be Gorbachev’s enemies. The coup leaders were men he promoted to high office. Now, in a moment of democratic euphoria, he has the chance to sever his ties with those representing the dead weight of the past.

The early indications, unhappily, point to a reluctance to seize that moment. In one of his first acts after being freed from house arrest, Gorbachev appointed Gen. Mikhail A. Moiseyev as defense minister, succeeding Dmitri Yazov, one of the coup leaders. In Washington’s view--shared by Yeltsin and others--Moiseyev looks very much like another conservative suspicious of reform. And in one of his first public statements, Gorbachev made a point of defending the Communist Party and proclaiming himself still “an adherent of socialism.” Supporters of reform could not have been heartened.

All this is helping to nudge the Bush Administration farther along a path it had already taken. From now on, said a high official speaking anonymously on Thursday, “we will support reformers in the Soviet Union wherever we find them--at the center, at the republic or at the local level.”

A few months ago the West was putting all its bets on Gorbachev, fearing that to do otherwise would weaken him in his confrontation with the right-wing. What this week’s events made dramatically clear is that there are alternative and effective sources of authority, like Yeltsin, that must be taken into account in forming U.S. policy. The bets will now be spread around.

In Washington those bets aren’t likely to involve big money, because there is none to spare. What does that leave in the way of possibilities? In the main it leaves what had been talked about earlier, only more of it, and more quickly: emergency humanitarian supplies of food and medicine and offers of expanded technical and managerial assistance. Significant help beyond this must await Soviet economic initiatives to create markets, liquidate inefficient state industries, steeply reduce military spending and privatize and modernize agriculture.

The West must also be ready to give its full moral support to political initiatives aimed at redistributing political power to bring it closer to the people. Yeltsin and the leaders of other republics now seem determined to press more strongly than ever for greater autonomy; Yeltsin is even demanding a Russian national guard as a defense force. The Baltic states, meanwhile, will intensify their efforts to win back the independence stolen from them half a century ago. It’s time for the West to take up President Bush’s call for quicker negotiations to achieve that just goal.

The collapse of the anti-reform coup leaves the Soviet Union facing huge problems. But out of crisis have come new opportunities for bold and sweeping actions. The United States and its allies must move swiftly to help Soviet reformers at all levels respond to these challenges.