The News : The Leaders We Will Have to Know

They are men who are picking up the pieces of the world’s largest country, figures of sudden international import who have spent much of their lives toiling in obscurity in places like Dushanbe or Baku.

One of them, Boris N. Yeltsin, has been a constant companion of American television watchers these past weeks, as he defiantly faced down a right-wing plot to seize power in the Kremlin.

Another, Vytautas Landsbergis, is well-known in the West for his obstinacy in asserting Lithuania’s right to be free.

But then there is the specialist in optics from the wilds of the Sino-Soviet borderlands, the fan of Emily Dickinson’s verse from the ancient land that also produced Josef Stalin, the Turkmen who doesn’t think the people of his sun-scorched, desert republic are ready for the tussle of real democracy.

Some are Communists. Others were imprisoned by Communists. All are, for now, serving as leaders of what used to be constituent Soviet republics, but which are now increasingly independent polities.

These mostly middle-aged men are becoming the new rulers in what had been the Soviet Union as the Kremlin’s power flickers and wanes.

In the coming days and weeks, they will be faced with decisions that could affect the entire planet. What, for example, should be done with the Soviet ICBMs, or Kremlin commitments on arms control or debt repayment?

Here are men the world will have to get to know.