Identity Crisis at the Soviet Embassy : * Diplomacy: Confusion reigns, just like back home. Staff members wonder about their future as Boris Yeltsin’s man comes to town.

A red flag still flutters above its beaux-arts facade, its exterior walls still bristle with video cameras, and unblinking guards in olive drab still watch the comings and goings of visitors to ensure order.

But the flag of the October Revolution is scheduled to come down by Jan. 1, and these days, the stately Soviet Embassy on 16th Street is anything but orderly inside. As the union it represents has wasted to nothing, the embassy’s 700 personnel have become preoccupied with guessing the identity of their new boss, anticipating what his orders will be--and figuring out whether they will lose what have always been some of the Soviet empire’s best jobs.

“With so many difficulties at home, and the future here not so clear, it is not the most pleasant time,” said one Soviet citizen in Washington.

The embassy that has represented the Communist state since 1933 may soon be representing the Russian republic or the emerging commonwealth of former Soviet states. Or it may represent some other configuration of Eurasian regions.

Three weeks ago, Andrey Kolosovskiy, a minister consul and personal envoy of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, arrived here to set up shop within an organization still nominally serving the central government of Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Two embassy diplomats soon attached themselves to Kolosovskiy’s organization-within-an-organization.

In a recent interview with Soviet journalists, Kolosovskiy said he did not find “open resistance” in Washington, which implies that he might have detected some covert maneuvering among the staff.

But if some are resisting, others are scrambling to demonstrate their allegiance to the man who may replace Ambassador Viktor Komplektov. And some joke grimly how they only wish they had picked the winner of the Gorbachev-Yeltsin power struggle six months earlier.

Last week, the embassy had its first-ever Christmas party, for members of the National Press Club. Traditional caviar and chilled Stolichnaya vodka were served, and the American journalists presented a Christmas tree that was erected on a second-floor landing, just outside the gold-leafed grand salon where the embassy receives its most important guests.

But the festivities didn’t completely conceal the hosts’ anxieties. What would the embassy do, one visitor asked, with the imposing brass plaque at the entrance: “Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”?

“Perhaps we’ll hold an auction,” one official joked.

“Obviously, it’s not exactly a brilliant season,” Georgi Oganov, the Soviet press attache, told a reporter from the Knight-Ridder news organization. “Somewhere deep in our hearts there is concern about how things are going in our country. Right now we are at a critical stage, where something new is emerging, and something old is not done yet.”

The signs of the changing order are everywhere. For the holidays, a staffer at a Washington think tank received a bottle of Irish Mist from the embassy, rather than the Armenian brandy he had come to expect. Attached was a note apologizing that supplies of the domestic product had been disrupted.

The embassy’s usual Nov. 7 celebration of the Russian Revolution, with its gala reception, was canceled. The observances “always meant a day off from work, so personally I can tell you I was not happy,” said one Soviet official, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked to remain unidentified.

Even answering visitors’ inquiries has become more difficult. One group of schoolchildren sat in the second-floor auditorium recently and asked officials some particularly perplexing questions, starting with “What will happen next with the Soviet Union?”

Just outside that auditorium hangs a glowering portrait of V. I. Lenin. Since the Soviet government’s internal turmoil began, “Americans have always asked me when we would take down the portrait,” said one official. “I would always say, ‘When the Americans take down the Washington Monument.’

“But now,” he said, “I am not so sure.”

In the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union tried to match the United States in the size of its embassy network. But now the Soviets have started to dismantle some embassies in the developing world, and talk is that there will be a 30% to 50% reduction in its Washington staff as well.

The embassy has long employed some of the Soviet Union’s brightest--diplomats and experts in a variety of technical and military specialties. Life has been very comfortable, though not luxurious. The average second secretary--a mid-level bureaucrat--typically earns about $1,000 a month, and gets shelter and gasoline free from the government, says one Soviet.

This year, many on staff are spending more of their earnings to help those enduring the winter of shortages back home. No longer do they buy VCRs and other electronic equipment to send back; now the shipments are far more likely to be food.

According to one Soviet, work at the embassy has slowed sharply as the staff has spent more and more time thinking about the future of their jobs, their political positions and the ordeal of the families they left behind. Many keep a close watch on the news ticker of Tass (the Soviet wire service), follow foreign news services, write home daily, and in emergencies, telephone their families.

The embassy’s confusion of identities is apparent in even a casual visit to the Edwardian edifice at 1125 16th St. NW. Visitors are buzzed through the tall, wrought-iron gate by invisible guards. The next barrier is a great front door, also secured with buzzered locks, which leads to a vestibule of ominous one-way glass.

This entrance opens onto a red-carpeted, colonnaded reception hall where two guards in military uniforms are seated behind a console watching 24 television monitors. The screens show the view from all embassy corners.

But these youthful guards seem cast in their Cold War roles only reluctantly. They are smiling, chatting and admiring the Christmas gift that has been set on the counter before them--a case of Chivas Regal Scotch whisky just delivered from the Seagram’s distillery. Soon, the case inspires a joke about a Chivas drinker recently in the news, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

But if Cold War memories are fading inside the embassy, some Americans outside seem to be clinging fast to them. When a visitor left the embassy this week, he was intercepted a block away by a dark-clad woman flashing a leather ID case with gold letters: “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Why had he been at the embassy? What identification could he show? Only when she learned the visitor was a reporter did the agent, suddenly abashed, disappear into the crowd.