Reports of Fading Soviet Influence in Middle East Affairs Are Premature : Geopolitics: With European-oriented republics seceding, Russia must strengthen historical ties with its Muslim populations.

Soviet co-sponsorship of this week’s Middle East peace conference is often dismissed as a vestige of the Cold War. Soviet involvement and influence in the region--what remains of it--is said to be declining rapidly and irreversibly. But domestic politics is pushing Moscow to play a much more intimate and aggressive role in Middle East affairs, largely because the region usually referred to as “Middle East” lies within Soviet borders.

Many people in the Soviet Union--or what used to be the Soviet Union--believe that with the breakup of the Communist empire, they are drawing closer to Europe. Actually, most of the country may be drifting in the opposite direction. The pro-Western Baltic states have seceded, and the Ukraine, the second largest Slavic republic, is heading toward complete independence. As a result, Muslim influence is bound to rise in what remains of the Soviet Union.

The Muslim population is growing much faster than the Russian. Muslim republics, even those proclaiming their independence, support the idea of maintaining some sort of union and central authority.

Economically, these republics are the most backward. They feel threatened by the growing self-assertiveness of the Russian government and its attempts to control a much larger share of national resources. It would be extremely difficult for Muslim republics to sustain the union’s collapse economically, which explains why they were among the first to sign a new Treaty of Economic Union.

Unwilling to secede politically, the republics seek to influence decision-making in Moscow. Toward that end, they sent representatives to the newly formed Soviet legislature even as some other republics ignored it.

The republic of Kazakhstan is the strongest of the Central Asian republics. It imports most of its machinery and consumer goods, but it has some vital resources to trade. Dozens of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles are deployed in Kazakhstan, and its leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has made it clear that he will not permit them to be withdrawn to Russia, thereby depriving his republic of nuclear status. He has no intention of blackmailing his neighbors, but his message is clear: Kazakhstan should have a much stronger voice in the future Soviet Union.

Nazarbayev is emerging as a key figure in Soviet politics. He supports the transition to a market-based economy, but is determined to maintain political stability.

Nazarbayev’s ambitions are not limited to Kazakhstan. The Treaty of Economic Union, it should be noted, was finalized in Alma-Ata, the Kazakh capital. The political importance of Alma-Ata was also underscored by the spate of visits there by prominent Western leaders, among them Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Kazakhstan is a testing ground for a new relationship between Russians and non-Slavs. About half its population is Russian. Russian nationalists, furthermore, claim a part of northern Kazakhstan as theirs. Thus far, there have been no large-scale ethnic conflicts in Kazakhstan.

But future developments depend to a large extent on the willingness and ability of Russians and their leaders to maintain their historic relationship with Asians.

For many centuries, it was most important for Russians to find a modus vivendi with Asian nomads, their most powerful and dangerous neighbors. It was not an easy coexistence. For two hundred years, Russia was under Mongolian domination, known as the time of the “Tatar-Mongole yoke.” In national mythology, it is remembered as a period of occupation and suppression. Weak and divided, Russia was one of the peripheral provinces of the far-flung Mongol empire.

When the Mongol empire began disintegrating, a much enhanced and vigorous Russia was ready to swallow, piece by piece, its heritage in Europe and Asia. The 19th-Century borders of the Russian empire virtually matched those of the Mongol empire six centuries earlier.

With their empire falling apart, Tatars were eager to serve Moscow. In the 15th and 16th centuries, a Muslim kingdom sprang up in the heart of Russia; one of its kings briefly held the title of nominal ruler of all of Russia. When President Mikhail S. Gorbachev recently suggested to elect a representative of a Muslim republic as a vice president, it struck that forgotten chord.

Russia did not have major problems integrating its Muslim neighbors into its orbit, either politically or culturally. Although central authority in Russia practically ceased to exist in the early 17th Century, the newly conquered Muslim kingdom of Kazan made no attempts to secede from Moscow’s rule. Indeed, Kazan produced a regiment of volunteers to free the national capital from foreign invaders.

To establish their historical legitimacy, today’s Russian leaders seemingly go out of their way to emphasize their distinctly Russian identity. Local Muslims--there are still Muslim enclaves, such as Kazan, in Russia--are hardly happy to see television images that prove the religious and ethnic identity of their rulers to be so different from their own.

Some Russian nationalists suggest that, in order to get rid of its Muslim underbelly, Russia should secede from the Soviet Union. But not only were the borders between Soviet republics arbitrarily drawn. Migrations during the last decades have also undercut any territorial claims of ethnic groups. There are millions and millions of Russians outside Russia proper, as well as many ethnic enclaves on Russian territory.

Centuries-old relationships between ethnic groups do not change easily. Muslims are going to get their share of power in what is left of the Soviet Union. Any Soviet or Russian leader should thus recognize them as a power soon to reckon with.

The Muslim republics, moreover, will increasingly seek to shape foreign policy. They will establish independent relationships with their neighbors. In so doing, there is little doubt that the republics will lean toward Middle Eastern countries, so close ethnically and culturally.

The Soviet Union has always been a Eur asian power, but changing circumstances underscore the need to emphasize the second half of the word, as the Soviet center of gravity is shifting eastward.