Poet Rhymes, but Pushkin He Ain’t : Russia: Anatoly Lukyanov, imprisoned as plotter, gets a recital that draws nostalgic fans.

The poet laureate of the putsch was otherwise occupied. But sympathizers jammed a Moscow theater on Thursday to stormily applaud Anatoly I. Lukyanov’s melancholy, defiant verse and demand his release from prison.

In no land is the poet more revered than in Russia--doubly so for one who has run afoul of authorities. Lukyanov, the windy former Speaker of the Soviet legislature, keeps busy writing poetry while awaiting trial on charges that he took part in last August’s attempt to overthrow Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union.

Assembled at a movie theater next to a restaurant owned by an entrepreneur from Trenton, N.J., some of Lukyanov’s supporters mentioned their hero in the same breath as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin and other persecuted members of the Russian intelligentsia.

“Always, Russian literature has taken the side of the downtrodden,” reflected Valery S. Rogov, one of 11 archconservative organizers of the benefit reading of Lukyanov’s verse.

A standing-room-only crowd of at least 500 admirers attended to show support for a man they hold to be one of the first political prisoners of the post-Soviet era. An hour into the event, a few hundred rubles had been collected in a plexiglass cube--as well as a single dollar bill.

As the evening wore on, there were noisy displays in favor of restoring Communist rule, a vote of audience members in favor of appealing to Russia’s Parliament to free Lukyanov and curses for the “traitors” and “sellers of Christ” now in power in Russia.

Sitting at a table decorated with a few cellophane-wrapped bunches of red and white carnations, a trio of stage actors declaimed Lukyanov’s often-brooding poems in the emotional, bombastic style common to Russian oratory.

One poem went:

More than life, I valued my darling Russia

with its broad soul,

so patient and big ,

and its good Russian strength.

Murkily recorded cassettes played over the theater’s audio system brought the monotonous voice of Lukyanov himself to the raptly listening audience.

In one segment, Lukyanov, a law school graduate whose pen name translates to something like “the man of autumn,” said that despite all his trials, he still believes in “human good” and “our multinational motherland.”

“Soviet Union! Soviet Union!” chanted many people in the theater, some raising their fists. Others shouted “Svobodu!” --freedom.

Those attending included Sazhi Umalatova and other key participants in a rump Soviet congress that this month proclaimed the restoration of the U.S.S.R., and Yegor K. Ligachev, a hard-liner who was once the No. 2 official in the Soviet Communist Party. Ligachev cheerfully signed autographs.

Lukyanov, a Moscow State University chum of Gorbachev, is being held in the investigations ward of Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

Organizers of the poetry soiree had asked Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand to help secure Lukyanov’s temporary release for the poetry reading, and they had offered to occupy his jail cell to guarantee his return there.

“Of course he (wasn’t) allowed to go,” commented Alexander G. Zvyagintsev, a spokesman in the Russian prosecutor’s office, recalling the gravity of the charges against Lukyanov--participating in a plot to seize power. “Besides, Lukyanov is not even a professional author.”

Sources in the prosecutor’s office cited an added complication--yet another putsch suspect, former Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov, is also penning poetry.

“If he or his family or close friends ever found out that Lukyanov was granted a ‘breather’ to attend a recital party, they would immediately jump at it” and demand Yazov be allowed the same privilege, one official said.

Lukyanov, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, has needed medical care while in captivity, reportedly after a nervous collapse.

“Does he suffer? Yes, of course, it would be nicer to be free,” Lukyanov’s wife, Ludmila Dmitrievna, said in an interview. She said her husband is looking forward to being able to prove his innocence “in open court.”

As to the merits of Lukyanov’s verse, which has been printed in a sympathetic newspaper and in booklet form, it seems to please few except his political supporters.

“What Lukyanov writes has nothing to do with poetry,” was the verdict of Benedict M. Sarnov, a noted Russian poetry critic. “His contribution to literature is as great as that of the late Leonid Ilych Brezhnev,” the Kremlin leader whose ghostwritten works were notoriously boring.

Sergei Loiko, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow bureau, contributed to this story.