Old-Guard Communist Wins Tadzhikistan Vote : Soviet Union: The poorest republic opts for conservative policies, tally shows. Loser charges election fraud.

Cementing its reputation as the firmest bastion of conservatism in the post-coup Soviet Union, Tadzhikistan elected an old-time Communist Party boss as its new president, according to preliminary returns released Monday.

As if trying to turn time back to the simple days before perestroika, 57% of the voters in the impoverished Central Asian republic cast ballots for Rakhman Nabiyev, a discredited member of the party Old Guard who was pushed into retirement soon after Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev began his reforms in 1985.

Nabiyev’s main opponent in the elections, liberal film-maker Davlat Khudonazarov, polled only 30%, Tass news agency reported. The 47-year-old loser immediately issued a formal complaint about electoral abuses and demanded that the results be set aside and that a new election be conducted.

Claiming he had evidence of widespread election rigging, Khudonazarov warned a press conference in Dushanbe, Tadzhikistan’s capital, of “the impending threat of totalitarianism” and hinted at an opposition backlash still to come in the largely Muslim republic of 5 million.

Khudonazarov’s decision to challenge the election results raised the prospect of another prolonged bout of civil unrest, similar to two weeks of protests and confrontations that rocked Dushanbe in September.

Those disturbances began when Communist Party leaders, rejecting the ban placed on the party in the wake of the failed conservative coup in August, used their overwhelming majority in the republic’s Parliament to oust the acting president, announce a state of emergency and put Nabiyev, 61, in charge.

Thousands of progressive democrats and Islamic fundamentalists immediately took to the streets, camping out for days on Dushanbe’s central Liberty Square in front of the government building in tents, chanting and breaking periodically for prayer sessions.

By early October, the ban on the Communist Party was restored, and Nabiyev agreed to relinquish the leadership post pending elections.

That round of unrest was the second in Tadzhikistan in recent months; more than 20 people were killed in February last year in rioting provoked by rumors that scarce housing in Dushanbe was to be distributed to outsiders.

The poorest of the 12 remaining Soviet republics, Tadzhikistan depends largely on cotton and other farming, as well as subsidies from the rest of the Soviet Union. With the four other republics of Central Asia, it has traditionally acted as a force for conservatism in Soviet politics. But clinching that reputation was the election of Nabiyev, who rose to power under the regime of former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev--now labeled the “stagnation era.” Nabiyev has since been accused of various abuses of power during his tenure as Tadzhikistan’s party chief in the early 1980s.

Nabiyev’s victory in Sunday’s elections, if the outcome is confirmed by a commission set up Monday by election officials to investigate Khudonazarov’s complaints, would indicate that the conservative Parliament’s attempts to restore the old regime in September actually reflected the view of the Tadzhik majority. Nabiyev has portrayed himself as a force for order and stability; his campaign emphasized the need to find pragmatic ways to bring the republic out of its economic and political crises.

Khudonazarov, a progressive who is also chairman of the Soviet Filmmakers’ Union, envisioned sweeping economic reforms for the republic and a renewal of its national identity. He was backed by liberals as well as the Islamic religious groups, who recently received the right to form legal political parties and now belong largely to the Party of Islamic Revival.

The balloting was overseen by independent observers from other Soviet republics and abroad. But Khudonazarov told reporters that he could document cases of active campaigning at the polls, of ballots being distributed to people without proper identification and of heavy pressure being put on voters. The commission investigating his charges is expected to announce its conclusions within several days.