NEWS ANALYSIS : Soviets Fearful of New Coup by Restive Military

Ominous rumblings from deep within the armed forces have raised fears of another coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, this time with strong military support--and, thus, a much better chance of succeeding.

The army, many Soviet political observers say, is increasingly alarmed at the Soviet Union’s breakup, the collapse of its economy and the inability of political leaders to resolve the country’s multiple crises.

While these concerns are widespread, the conviction is said to be growing among the Soviet officer corps that only the armed forces have the organization, the willpower and, of course, the might to save the nation.

Andrei S. Grachev, the president’s press secretary, acknowledged the growing discontent in the Soviet military this week and said a coup with its support is “a very real danger.”

As the crisis deepens and political pressure consequently mounts, Grachev told journalists, “the army may become an instrument of unconstitutional action of an irresponsible force.” And with traumatic changes ahead as the Soviet Union moves to a free-market economy, “the most dangerous period is yet to come,” he said.

Across the political spectrum, the talk today--and so far it remains only talk--is of a coup that would be backed, if not led, by a military angered by the accelerating disintegration of the Soviet Union.

“We need new leaders,” Gen. Leonid Kozhendayev, of the Soviet general staff, told Komsomolskaya Pravda, the leading liberal newspaper, in the military’s boldest warning of its dissatisfaction. “I think they will be advanced by the people, who are sick and tired of standing in lines for bread and fearing the next day.

“And whether the ruling elite wants it or not,” he added, “the armed forces are being politicized. The army is losing patience. It will not tolerate for much longer this humiliation, this living a hungry life in small rented flats and serving a country that is no more.”

Anatoly A. Sobchak, St. Petersburg’s radical mayor, predicted this week that, if the army did rebel, the people might support a military takeover, in contrast to their opposition to the conservative putsch last August, as the best way to halt the country’s disintegration.

“Such chaos, in turn, will create the need (for the military) to put things in order,” he said. “A military dictatorship whose declared goal is simply to restore order has a chance of success.”

Even Gorbachev speculated in a long interview published this week by the newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta that a coup “may even be in the works now. Perhaps there is someone from the military-industrial complex, perhaps from the (Communist) Party structures.”

Running through all the talk, which has become a political preoccupation in recent weeks, is the assumption that the 4-million member Soviet armed forces are ready, in contrast with the August coup, to overthrow the government they serve and to fire on their own people.

“The army can be used to take power, but it is naive to say that the army would come to power itself,” Gen. Sergei V. Stepashin, chairman of the Russian legislature’s security affairs committee, said in an interview this week. “August proved that the army of Russia also supports the democratic process.”

Stepashin, though skeptical of military participation in any effort to replace the elected governments, warned that the deteriorating economic circumstances and living conditions of Soviet officers might tempt them to support an overthrow by either archconservatives wanting a return to socialism or ultranationalists advocating a Russian fascism.

“The most important thing right now is to create more or less humane conditions for the officer corps and the troops this winter,” Stepashin said. “A hungry person with a gun--that is a dangerous person.”

Gorbachev dismissed many of the Soviet army’s top leaders after the August coup. Marshal Dmitri T. Yazov, the defense minister, had been one of the main conspirators, and his key deputies had failed to oppose the putsch, if they had not been involved themselves.

Air Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, the new defense minister, pledged on taking over in August to change 80% of the top commanders and to push through a reform program that would depoliticize the armed forces, which had about 1 million Communist Party members. But most of Shaposhnikov’s changes have stalled, and the majority of the senior officers on his staff at the ministry and in the general staff are holdovers from the Yazov era.

“What better way to recruit staff for a military putsch than to tell 80% of your top generals that they will lose their jobs--and then leave them in place for more than three months with all the time and power they need to plan a takeover?” a commentator in the new liberal newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta asked last week.

Despite the failure of the August putsch, which collapsed after three days of popular protests against it, scenarios abound for the new coup; almost all envision the military swinging its weight behind the rebellion if not leading it.

“The struggle between political parties and national movements has destroyed the state,” Kozhendayev, the general staff member, declared last week. “After the August putsch, the people’s will to preserve the union has been increasingly ignored. Chaos, lawlessness, corruption and crime have swept the country. The economy is destroyed. Nationalist forces are hastily creating their militias, and tomorrow they will fight.”

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister who had previously resigned his post with a prophetic warning of the growing threats of a Soviet dictatorship, this week also warned of the possibility of a new coup. He said that the growing disintegration of Soviet society may prompt a coup from the right-wing, as public nostalgia for a “strong hand” rises. But he did not specifically implicate the military.

Kozhendayev, describing himself and other general staff members as “servicemen, not putsch-ists,” said officers had forwarded plans to their superiors to deal with the crisis. “We must stop smiling,” he said. “It is time to take measures, harsh measures.”

Gavriil Popov, Moscow’s radical mayor, sees in such warnings preliminary moves by those who would launch a coup, an effort to justify their planned actions in advance, but moves that can be countered. “It would be wrong to use the word putsch to describe the events that could be waiting for us,” Popov said Thursday. “Probably, it will be mass movements or uprisings of the lumpen (low-class) parts of society.”

These might then be seized upon by Communist Party hard-liners, conservative generals or even radical leftists of the democratic movement to justify moves against the government, Popov continued, saying: “I think it is possible and necessary to use force (to deal with such uprisings) and to use it as fast as possible before you have to use more of it.”

For its part, the Soviet officer corps in its almost daily comments on the political situation is showing a new readiness to participate in politics and even to act.

But the interests of the generals, who largely remain pro-Communist, diverge from those of middle-level and junior officers, who appear to be most concerned about where they will live, how they will feed their families and what careers remain for them in a scaled-down army.

Officers representing the Baltic garrisons, meeting last month near Kaliningrad, adopted a resolution declaring their right to review and approve--or reject--all orders for their redeployment. “We will not leave our garrisons no matter what decisions are taken,” they declared, describing “an order to withdraw without adequate guarantees of social security as criminal” and warning that they “reserve the moral right not to execute it.”

While their main concern is housing for those leaving the now-independent states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the resolution was broader in asserting this right of review.

“They claim the right--judging the morality of orders--that we are not prepared to grant to individual officers or their committees,” said Lt. Gen. Valery L. Manilov, the new head of the Defense Ministry’s information department.

Another fear in the Baltic region is that the Russians living in the three states might appeal for help against strongly nationalist governments trying to force them out and the officers would respond to such a “kith-and-kin” plea, clashing with local forces.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry has ordered its commanders to take firmer measures in response to challenges from groups, including the national guards being formed by a number of republics, trying to seize military bases and weapons. Similar orders were given to Soviet Interior Ministry troops. The order specifically authorized use of firearms to defend facilities and weapons, and, Manilov said, “The attackers must know this and twice before mounting the attack.

“If attempts are undertaken to establish a blockade of army units or garrisons, the armed forces will in turn take adequate measures to break the blockade, and the responsibility will fall on the initiators,” he said in an interview.

But a Gorbachev aide expressed concern, saying: “With tensions fairly high in the Baltic military district and the mood increasingly sour in the officer corps generally, unplanned, unforeseen things can spark much larger events, even catastrophic ones. An attack on the wife of a middle-rank officer in one of the republics, say, could easily bring out a battalion of troops to defend her honor and that of the Soviet army. What would happen then? . . .

“These scenarios are proliferating every day, and in view of August we have to take the dangers seriously. But, politically and psychologically, it is very debilitating to begin each day thinking, ‘Will the army launch a coup today?’ Yet, that’s what we must think about.”

Times staff writers Carey Goldberg and Elizabeth Shogren and Times Moscow Bureau reporter Viktor K. Grebenshikov contributed to this story.