Profile : Philosopher-Politician Has a Vision for Russia : Gennady Burbulis foresaw communism’s collapse when it still seemed impossible. Now, he’s a key architect of the federation’s future.

As hard-line Communists began to tighten their hold on the Soviet Union a year ago, stalling and even reversing the political and economic reforms of perestroika , a philosopher-politician laid out the broad strategy that ultimately led to their defeat in an August coup d’etat.

Gennady E. Burbulis, now the secretary of state of the Russian Federation but then a behind-the-scenes adviser to Boris N. Yeltsin, foresaw that 1991 would bring the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism.

Yeltsin’s primary task, Burbulis told him, should be to “consolidate the moral and political prestige undoubtedly enjoyed by Russia’s leadership” and thus prepare for “the final disintegration of this totalitarian system.”

As the year wore on in a continuous struggle between the conservatives and radical reformers, Burbulis was proved right in both his assessment and his strategy, and he is now one of the principal people shaping the future of Russia as it emerges from the ruins of the Soviet Union.

Burbulis’ advice to Yeltsin last winter to confront President Mikhail S. Gorbachev over the Soviet leader’s swing toward the conservatives seemed risky; other Yeltsin advisers said it would only undercut Gorbachev and could provoke clashes in the street.

But Gorbachev recognized the sheer power of Yeltsin’s populism when hundreds of thousands turned out in support of the Russian leader and his call for radical reforms. Through the spring, Gorbachev developed a partnership with Yeltsin that saved the Soviet president during the August putsch.

Burbulis managed Yeltsin’s successful campaign to win the Russian presidency in June, when the Siberian populist became the Soviet Union’s first democratically elected leader.

Through the campaign, Yeltsin came to represent the country’s aspirations for democracy, prosperity and, perhaps above all, an end to communism. When he sought to rally the people at the start of the coup, they responded quickly, ready to fight and even die because those hopes were at stake.

Burbulis also undertook the restructuring of the Russian presidency as a state institution to enhance Yeltsin’s legal and political authority--and to ensure that the Russian Federation, the largest republic in the Soviet Union, would survive, strong and powerful, when the old system collapsed.

“We want Russia to become the locomotive that will lead the reforms within its own territory and to stimulate reforms in other republics of the former (Soviet) Union,” Burbulis said in an interview. “We have noble goals, but we cannot prolong the painful disintegration of this old totalitarian system.”

A former philosophy teacher, Burbulis has a vision of a strong but democratic Russia emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union.

He grows impatient with the demands that other republics now make on Russia for their participation in a new confederation. And he believes that no tolerance should be shown those Communist “revanchists” whom he sees organizing for a comeback.

“President Yeltsin enjoys the most powerful credit of trust from the people,” Burbulis commented. “We must now decide how best to employ it. . . . We have won a great political victory, but a political victory must be for something. . . . This is a crucial juncture for us, but we know where we want to go.”

When Yeltsin opens the next session of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies on Oct. 28, the sweeping program that he outlines for the country will have been prepared largely by Burbulis, who heads the republic’s State Council and has been dubbed “Yeltsin’s gray cardinal” by political commentators here.

The program is expected to contain proposals for a major overhaul of government structures at all levels, down to the village; economic reform, including privatization of state enterprises, and a new Russian constitution.

“My duties are, first of all, strategic planning and then to coordinate the foreign and domestic policies of Russia and to provide the interaction of all the structures connected with Russia’s security,” Burbulis said.

“The state secretary is an integrator of domestic and foreign policies with a duty to implement them through the president’s principal strategic decisions.”

When translated into action, however, this role has plunged Burbulis deeper and deeper into political controversies, such as the question of Russia’s domination of a new confederation here. He is also feuding publicly with Ruslan Khasbulatov, the acting chairman of the Russian Parliament, over issues such as legislative versus executive authority within the Russian Federation.

Even pro-Yeltsin newspapers, which see Burbulis as power-hungry, happily report the latest gossip about him, including his request for bodyguards.

Burbulis, 46, got into politics about 1986 when he helped organize a political discussion club in Ekaterinburg, then known as Sverdlovsk, an industrial center in the Ural Mountains where Yeltsin had been the Communist Party’s first secretary before moving into the national leadership in Moscow.

Those were the early years of perestroika, years of exploration beyond the barriers of Marxism-Leninism, of questioning the whole historical development of the Soviet Union, of testing the limits.

Even with a doctorate in philosophy and his high academic standing at the Urals Polytechnic Institute, one of the country’s largest, Burbulis said he had never felt free “to ask why.”

“The problem with fundamental questions, of course, is that they attacked the foundations of a system that was hollow,” he said. “Everything was achieved ultimately through force, through violence, and such societies cannot survive.”

Burbulis was born in Pervouralsk, about 25 miles from Ekaterinburg. His father was Lithuanian by birth but Russian by culture; his mother was Russian. After finishing high school, Burbulis served in the Soviet army’s rocket forces and then returned home to study and later teach philosophy.

A Communist Party member since 1970, Burbulis won election to the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989. And it was only after coming to Moscow to work with other reformist deputies that he met Yeltsin in person. Yeltsin had been elected to represent the Soviet capital in the congress.

When the radicals found their way blocked in the national legislature, where conservatives controlled a large bloc of votes, they switched to the Russian Federation and, under Yeltsin’s leadership, have made it the vehicle for reform.

“Both were from Sverdlovsk,” another member of the Inter-Regional Group of Deputies recalled, “but the main thing about Yeltsin and Burbulis was their ability to put Yeltsin’s political brawn together with Burbulis’ brain. Neither resented the other, neither patronized the other and each has been totally loyal to the other.”

Biography

Name: Gennady E. Burbulis

Title: Russian Federation secretary of state

Age: 46

Personal: Former philosophy teacher. Elected to Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989. Managed Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s election campaign. Married to another philosophy teacher; wife and son, 11, remain in Ekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk).

Quote: “Our credo is a strong Russian statehood realized in democratic forms. We won’t permit the disintegration or collapse of Russia, but we exclude the use of force in the solution of our problems.”