GOVERNMENT : Fledgling Court Tests Russian Democracy : Yeltsin’s ban on Communist Party is a crucial case. Verdict could determine government’s future.

Valery Zorkin, the august chairman of Russia’s Constitutional Court, was practically tearing his hair.

“The court is forced to ask you: Do you have a coordinator for your case or don’t you?” he exclaimed, looking over his glasses in exasperation at a Communist Party legal expert. “Your team has contradicted itself three times now!

“It’s not just the chairman saying this, but the other judges, as well,” he added. “And it’s not just the court saying this but simple logic!”

The court could be forgiven for occasionally losing its temper. Through days now stretching into weeks of testimony, Zorkin has faced the kind of pressure and public scrutiny that could wear down even a longtime lawyer bolstered by all the pomp of a post comparable to American chief justice.

Every ruling, every word, every facial expression counts.

Russia’s fledgling Constitutional Court, created just last fall when Parliament elected its 13 justices, is hearing its most critical case yet: whether President Boris N. Yeltsin had the right to ban the Communist Party, and whether the party itself was constitutional.

How the trial is run and the verdict it brings will help determine whether Russia is finally beginning to cement one of the key supports of democracy--an independent court system.

For decades, Soviet courts functioned under what was known as “telephone rule,” when a call to the judge from a Communist Party or government official was enough to determine a trial’s outcome.

Now, by most accounts, lower courts reach their own verdicts and the Constitutional Court, blessed with life terms for justices, kingly salaries and high visibility, has built-in immunity from political blackmail.

“They’ve shown that they answer only to the law,” Mikhail Karpov, who follows the court for the prestigious Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said of the justices. Yeltsin’s aides “risk a lot if they try to pressure them,” Karpov said. “All it takes is one declaration by a justice that they tried to influence him, and it’s political death.”

The judges do appear to feel pressure, observers say, but it is of a subtler kind. They worry about how their decision will affect the fate of Yeltsin’s government and mold the country’s political future. Zorkin went so far as to issue a warning last month of possible unrest.

“Concern about what is going to happen here pressures the court,” said Alevtin Meleshnikov, a lawyer consulting for Yeltsin’s side. “There’s an explosive situation in the country now, as there was last August.” He added, “If the Communist Party comes back to power, there probably won’t be a Constitutional Court.”

The court must also deal with its own emotional baggage. Eight of the 13 justices are listed in court records as former Communist Party members, and they cannot help but be influenced by their party experiences.

Their political pasts may influence the justices “subconsciously,” said Prof. Alexander Yakovlev, a renowned Russian expert on constitutional law. But, he said, “I’m sure its decision will give us--perhaps for the first time in the history of our country--an example of the strict observance of the rule of law.

“This is one of the biggest tests for democracy,” he said.

The test is so daunting that the newspaper Commersant predicted that Justice Zorkin would resign. He would find himself caught in an unbearable bind, the weekly said, finding the president’s decree impossible politically to overturn but equally impossible ethically to uphold.

But, so far, commentators and legal experts say the court is coming through with flying colors. They tend to make up procedure as they go, but they have brought no cry of foul from either side, thus far.

The justices, all of them legal experts and professors little known outside their field before being elected, have already shown an impressive will to stand up to Yeltsin. In recent months, they have nullified one of his decrees on creating a police-and-security super-ministry and upheld railroad workers’ demands that the government fulfill its promise to sell them cheap cars.

In the overflow rooms of the Constitutional Court building on Ilyinka Street, odds-givers have no favorite for the trial’s verdict, and even less idea of how long the whole thing will last.