Yeltsin’s Approach Is Sound and Necessary : Soviet Union: By joining the new commonwealth, the republics will be entering into relationships freely and voluntarily this time.

Yet again, various republics of the old Soviet Union have set off in search of evasive formulas to try to hold together at least a few residual ties from the past. This time, the approach seems somewhat sounder than anything Mikhail S. Gorbachev came up with. For if any new community of nations is to successfully emerge from the ashes of the old Soviet Union, it must develop from a “zero base”; it must accord with the specific needs of its members--growing naturally and organically, rather than by fiat of central, arbitrary planners.

Unlike Gorbachev’s “build-down” process of whittling down the old order, this process seeks to “build up,” creating a new entity from scratch; this time, prospective members will be entering into new relationships freely and voluntarily, rather than straining to loosen the Kremlin’s leash.

The new commonwealth is clearly a step in the right direction--precisely because it spells the death of the unworkable and unsalvageable old order. We would be kidding ourselves, however, to think that this new formula, the Commonwealth of Independent States, is any kind of final formulation for the peoples of the old Soviet Union. This new structure, too, will be debated, tinkered with and revised for many years to come--and may not work out either. Decades might be required to overcome the trauma of the past.

By choosing Minsk as the new capital, Russian President Boris Yeltsin is obviously trying to alleviate fears of a new big brother Moscow. But wherever the capital is located, these fears cannot be easily assuaged; none of the republics will wish to invest this commonwealth with any more power than necessary to ensure their own interests.

Suspicions run deep and nationalist cravings high. For only when each republic feels that it can fulfill its own national--and nationalist--aspirations will it start ceding significant chunks of its hard-won sovereignty to anyone else. At this point, it is dubious whether even foreign and defense policies can be successfully coordinated, as the three Slavic states have declared their intentions to do. For both Ukraine and Belarus, the military threat stems at least as readily from Russia as from anywhere West.

Gorbachev will have no choice but to accede to these new arrangements, for they have a better chance of working than his historically tainted efforts at reworking versions of the old Union; the new arrangements may even come to resemble something of what he had hoped to create. But can Gorbachev himself come to head such an new commonwealth, however limited its powers? He is now largely associated at home with hardship and collapse, even if he is perceived in the West as the man who brought 70 years of Cold War to an end. Gorbachev may indeed be perceived as a symbolic liability among the republics, but his excellent ties with the outside world may justify his retention as titular head of a commonwealth, despite his domestic popularity ratings.

Other republics are now in the process of joining the Slavic commonwealth, for few of them have much chance of making it on their own. Subregional groupings too, may yet emerge: around the Slavic grouping at the heart, a Baltic, a Caucasian and a Central Asian grouping, each perhaps working out confederal ties within their own region. But this process will take time, for nearly all of the newly independent republics at this stage can only dimly grope toward new relationships with each other and with the world.

Yeltsin’s stated commitment to rapidly move Russia toward a market economy will not sit easily with many of the leaders of the other republics, most of whom are only recent converts from the old party apparat and hardly at home with market forces. A free-market Russia may not represent what the authoritarian Uzbek leadership seeks as a partner. Yet can Uzbekistan, or any other republic, afford to stay out? The new Russia, ironically, once again becomes a revolutionary force in some parts of the old Soviet Union.

The old Union had to go; events today are, overall, moving in the desirable and necessary direction. But even the necessary direction will be deeply tempestuous--traversing a political, economic and social transition that history has never before witnessed. The disposition of huge nuclear arsenals is first on everyone’s minds, but prolonged internal conflict will also prove destabilizing.

Conflict will not necessarily be only between republics, but also within republics, in ethnic struggles for dominance. But the bugaboo of Islamic fundamentalism need not necessarily emerge supreme in the region, as some have suggested, simply because the Muslim republics have become independent; but any conflict within the Muslim republics that involves the large number of Russian minorities will find expression not only in nationalist, but in Islamic terms as well.

If there is any comfort to be drawn, it is that gradually the necessary and right things are happening in the old Soviet Union, not the wrong things. It is noteworthy that the Soviet political roller coaster of the past five years has passed with remarkably little violence and bloodshed, a hopeful harbinger for the rough years ahead. But our interests lie in a great deal more than nuclear weapons, and we had better act accordingly.