COLUMN ONE : Can Soviet Liberals Keep Faith? : Triumphant democrats have finally seized the reins of power. But critics fear they are already abandoning the ideals of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

Years from now, when today’s Soviet lawmakers are leafing through their scrapbooks from those wild old perestroika days, they will come upon a historic snapshot dated Thursday, Sept. 5.

In the great hall of the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses stand the liberal politicians who struggled in the anti-Communist opposition for more than two years. With them, in a sign of gratitude and appreciation, stands Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The liberals, known in Soviet political parlance as democrats, had won top local and republic posts before. But on Thursday, with passage by the Congress of People’s Deputies of the new power structure they had backed, they laid claim to what is left of the central government, including its president.

“We’ve triumphed,” said Arkady Murashev, a democratic leader. “Everything that we proposed at the first Congress, absolutely everything, we have attained in less than two years.”

Now, democrats acknowledge, they face a different, age-old question: how to replace the old government elite without letting power and the pressure of solving the country’s crises taint and corrupt them as well.

Accusations are already mounting that they have abandoned the ideals of peace, democracy, human rights, self-determination for the republics and rule by law propounded by their spiritual leader, the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei D. Sakharov.

“The victory of the democrats is turning into a serious threat to democracy,” commentator Dmitri Furman wrote in the liberal newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta this week. “Already, a picture is shaping up of an authoritarian populist regime with a leader who is considered ‘the people’s president’ at its head, with his base in the ‘democratic movement’ devoted to him.

“Anti-communism, Russian nationalism and nationalist-tinted Russian orthodoxy predominate in its ideology and symbolism,” Furman continued. “The Bolshevik-fascist spirit, which has been driven out the door, has crawled back in through the window with amazing ease.”

The president Furman meant is Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, one of the democrats’ leaders since the movement began in early 1989 and now, with his leading role in foiling last month’s reactionary putsch, a national hero.

Formerly Gorbachev’s main opposition at the pinnacle of Soviet power, Yeltsin now appears more powerful than his old rival in his post as head of a vast republic rather than of a crumbling empire.

The key now, said Leningrad liberal Yuri Boldyrev, is to keep Yeltsin’s rule truly democratic.

“The problem is that this putsch allowed many people to become national heroes,” Boldyrev said. “They really did show themselves as heroes, there’s no doubt about that, but it will allow them to be irreproachable for some time. And unfortunately, it must be admitted that they’re making a lot of mistakes now.”

Yuri Afanasyev, a historian and a prominent democrat, said many of his colleagues strongly object to a statement by the Yeltsin administration last week raising the possibility that the Russian Federation harbors territorial claims against other republics.

They also disagree with Yeltsin’s decree closing down Communist newspapers, he said, asserting: “That’s not something democrats do.”

And Alexei Kazannik, normally a Yeltsin supporter, complained Thursday that the Russian leader rammed approval for the new power-structure plan through the Russian delegation by asking deputies to vote with a show of hands as he looked on--the way that the late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin used to do.

“Many of those who were on the side of the democrats are, in their style and thinking, far from being democrats,” Murashev acknowledged.

But Galina Starovoitova, a respected lawmaker who often worked with Sakharov, reacted more tolerantly to the changes in her old comrades-in-arms, who range from Moscow Mayor Gavriil K. Popov and Leningrad Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak to Yeltsin himself.

“The ideals of the democrats remain the same,” she said. “It’s another matter that before, the democrats were the persecuted opposition and now many of them are in power, with the responsibility for the survival of cities like Moscow and Leningrad on their shoulders.

“If the mayors nominated by the democratic movement are forced into compromises,” Starovoitova continued, “we can’t rebuke them for that because if the standard of living under the democrats keeps falling as it’s falling now, it will lead to disillusionment in the very values of democracy.

“It was easier to be in the opposition. We can only remember with nostalgia the days when we were in the opposition and didn’t carry responsibility for the economic ruin.”

Those were indeed heady days--the first Congress of People’s Deputies in late spring of 1989, when the Soviet masses saw the dissident Sakharov for the first time and watched a real, vocal parliamentary opposition develop in a country where legislatures had been Communist Party puppets for 70 years.

The democrats, united in a faction called the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, were among the very few who could even begin to use parliamentary tactics, calling for “points of procedure” when most deputies did not even know what they were.

Gorbachev, in those days an ardent Communist convinced that some of his biggest foes were among the democrats’ ranks, out-maneuvered them at every turn, at one point driving the venerable Sakharov from the podium.

Although the democrats got little accomplished, they got tremendous exposure on nightly broadcasts of the Congress and made their names as politicians.

There was Sergei Stankevich, a serious young historian well acquainted with Western parliamentary practice; Popov, a roly-poly economist with a tendency to mumble but to speak the stark truth about communism and its economics; Afanasyev, an embittered former Communist with the look of a college football coach, and many more.

They were smart. They spoke well. They made inspiring underdogs in the struggle against the Communist monolith, and they fought for all the right causes as largely defined by Sakharov, who earned the title “conscience of the nation.”

But they would have gotten nowhere without Yeltsin, the people’s darling, the party martyr, who boomed out his complaints and proposals in language everyone could understand. With his repeated election victories, Yeltsin became the bridge between the democrats’ high-flown ideals and the masses.

And it was Yeltsin’s “White House,” the Russian government building on the Moscow River, that became the bulwark of democracy against last month’s attempted coup. The democrats who kept the vigil with him--from his dry, pipe-smoking legislature chairman, Ruslan Khasbulatov, to Stankevich, now his adviser--shared in the glory.

Former Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and former Gorbachev adviser Alexander N. Yakovlev--considered leading liberals although they normally keep some distance from the Yeltsin camp and other democrats--also cemented their reputations by timely opposition to the coup.

Perhaps more than anything else, the coup attempt by hard-liners that Gorbachev himself had handpicked appeared to convince the Soviet president that the democrats, for all their needling criticism, nagging and arguing over the last two years, are his true allies.

“Our attitude toward Gorbachev has always been respectful,” Murashev said, “and it’s no surprise that he came to be photographed with us because despite everything, we all have a feeling of gratitude to him in our souls.”

In a classic political irony, however, the moment the liberals announced their victory on Thursday, they also announced that their movement, in many ways, is dead.

With the common enemy largely vanquished, members said, there is nothing for the opposition to oppose. And with the Congress of People’s Deputies effectively defunct, the Inter-Regional Deputies’ Group is now out of business as well.

In effect, Boldyrev said, it may be time for many democrats to break out of the Yeltsin camp and begin a new opposition, now that the Communist Party, which seemed so unconquerable just two years ago, is paralyzed by bans on its activity through much of the country and unable to mount any real challenge.

“I always said that democrats should not strive to attain an overwhelming majority in the organs of power,” Boldyrev said. “If that happens, it’s necessary to create a new opposition. Otherwise, nothing good is going to come of it.”

But Boldyrev added that almost certainly “the democratic movement as it was is over, if there is no new outbreak of totalitarianism like the putsch. In the United States, there is no single democratic movement of both Democrats and Republicans. I think here, too, people will split along questions of principle, on the economy and national questions.”

Shevardnadze and Yakovlev founded a group, the Democratic Reform Movement, in July in an apparent attempt to unite both democrats and liberal Communists, but it was largely dismissed by the democrats as a haven for old party members. The movement is scheduled to hold a founding congress this month, but its prospects are unclear.

Murashev, asked if he feels nostalgic for the Inter-Regional Group, said, “Sure, the way you miss a good summer in autumn.”

But, he added: “It’s like childhood. Life goes forward.”

Leading Soviet Liberals

EDUARD A. SHEVARDNADZE

Former foreign minister; held the post from 1985 to 1990 when he resigned, warning that the Soviet Union was on the verge of a dictatorship. Quit Communist Party and became co-chairman of the new Democratic Reform Movement.

ANATOLY A. SOBCHAK

Elected mayor of Leningrad in 1990. Lawyer and former head of Leningrad University law faculty. Chaired a committee of the Congress of People’s Deputies that investigated killing of participants in 1989 riots in Tbilisi in republic of Georgia. Quit Communist Party in 1990.

GAVRIIL K. POPOV

Mayor of Moscow since 1990. An economist and radical reformer. Introduced management and business studies at Moscow University, where he taught and became dean of economics faculty. Was editor in chief of an economics journal and has published more than a dozen books on management techniques. Quit Communist Party in 1990.

ALEXANDER N. YAKOVLEV

Gorbachev’s senior adviser. Architect of glasnost . Founded Democratic Reform Movement with Shevardnadze in apparent attempt to reunite the liberals.