COLUMN ONE : ’92 Vintage Bitter for Gorbachev : Indignities visited on the ex-Soviet leader ranged from having most of his office space seized to a charge he aided terrorists. Though Russians feel he’s irrelevant, he’s not so sure.

For the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, 1992 was an appalling year.

Once master of the world’s largest country, Mikhail S. Gorbachev watched his Moscow domain shrink to a three-room apartment and 1,000 square meters of leased office space. One limousine was repossessed, another stolen.

He was accused of lying, bankrolling terrorists and covering up the crimes of Josef Stalin. He was served with a subpoena, and his passport was impounded.

Inflation has pulverized his 4,000-ruble-a-month state pension to the equivalent of $10. At his desk in the think tank that bears his name, he now nibbles open-faced sausage and cheese sandwiches like his underlings, and sips tea.

But one recent afternoon, as snow drifted by his second-story study in northwestern Moscow and the wan daylight faded, Gorbachev, first and last president of the Soviet Union, appeared strangely upbeat. In fact, if there were a Russian equivalent for the phrase “comeback kid,” it would seem to fit his frame of mind perfectly.

“If you compare the goals put forward by today’s authorities and what was put forth by Gorbachev--reform of property relations, transition to political pluralism via democracy, recognition of dissident thought, reform of the Union--have you heard anything new from today’s reformers?” Gorbachev asked during an interview.

His round face flushed a beet red, his brown eyes ablaze, he leaned forward in his chocolate-colored armchair and answered his own question: “You haven’t.”

Forced to leave office in humiliating circumstances on Christmas Day, 1991, by his political arch-nemesis, Boris N. Yeltsin, Gorbachev is now dropping hints that he might some day challenge Yeltsin for the presidency of Russia.

“Do you think the Gorbachev epoch is over?” he said in a television interview aired as what must have been the most humbling year of his life drew to a close. “No, the dawn has just occurred, and it is not noon yet.”

But do Russians these days have any time for the man who headed the Soviet Union and its equally defunct ruling party? And what of the damage done to Gorbachev’s reputation by a series of bruising, spectacular accusations, some attributable to Yeltsin himself, over the past 12 months?

If those charges are true, the Kremlin leader who became a worldwide hero because of his candor and advocacy of ethical politics was, in reality, one of history’s most successful con men, deceiving old cold warrior Ronald Reagan, the Nobel Prize committee and countless millions who came down with “Gorbymania.”

“There is a practice in this country that even responsible political figures make statements that have no proof,” Gorbachev’s spokesman, Alexander A. Likhotal, aptly notes in his boss’s defense. But the case against Gorbachev sometimes seems strong indeed:

* In June, Yeltsin said that former American POWs, possibly from the Korean or Vietnam wars, might be alive on Russian soil. He promised Congress that if any were found, they would be reunited with their families. Had Gorbachev, creator of the policy of glasnost, or openness, known of these captives all the time he was courting the United States but kept silent?

* Last October, Yeltsin made public transcripts of flight recorder tapes from a South Korean passenger jet shot down by a Soviet fighter Sept. 1, 1983, over the Sea of Japan. All 269 people aboard died in one of the most chilling acts of the Cold War. The declassified materials included transcripts of radio exchanges between the airliner’s crew and Japanese air control, photos of the plane’s recovered flight recorders and top-secret reports to Soviet rulers.

Though many mysteries persist about Korean Air Lines Flight 007, including why it was 300 miles off course, the documents do not support the Soviet charge that the airliner was on a spy mission. So why did Gorbachev keep mum?

* Fishing more explosive material out of once-secret archives, Yeltsin gave proof to the Poles that the annihilation of the cream of their officer corps at Katyn Forest in 1940 was carried out under direct orders from Stalin’s Politburo. Once again, Gorbachev seemed guilty of subterfuge for concealing evidence relating to the single most disturbing incident in Soviet-Polish relations.

* The most lurid accusation so far against Gorbachev came from then-First Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail N. Poltoranin, who now heads a government information service created by Yeltsin. Until 1991, Poltoranin charged, Gorbachev’s regime supplied guns and funds to terrorists. “Assistance mainly took the form of money, weapons, special supplies,” the senior Russian official claimed. “Weapons were delivered by warships to be handed over somewhere in the Atlantic.”

Poltoranin said proof would be produced from formerly classified party archives.

But it never materialized. When Likhotal told Gorbachev of the accusation, he replied, “Let them publish the document; I have nothing to fear.”

On the issue of American POWs, Yeltsin’s hypothesis, to date, has proven baseless, although it may take until May to fully search the once-secret Soviet archives.

However, Russian authorities did uncover shocking incidents, kept buried in files during Gorbachev’s 1985-1991 tenure, involving the brutal mistreatment of Americans. Two U.S. civilians were killed by Soviet secret police in the late 1940s after serving prison terms for espionage.

At the end of World War II, 119 GIs with Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish names were detained by the Red Army as they liberated Americans from Nazi stalags. Forty-nine U.S. citizens were imprisoned in Soviet labor camps and forced to renounce their citizenship.

About KAL Flight 007, Gorbachev has said: “I did not take any steps--those who want to can trace them--to withhold any information in my possession. Presumably, the documents that have been handed over were general knowledge.”

It is barely conceivable, however, that Gorbachev, at the time a member of the ruling Politburo, was unaware that KAL 007’s flight recorders were recovered by Soviet search parties 19 days after the jet’s destruction.

In 1991, while Gorbachev was still Soviet leader, the government newspaper Izvestia published a major series asserting that the flight recorders had been found. That year, Gorbachev’s chief of staff issued a statement saying there was no new information about the tragedy.

Likhotal says the materials released by Yeltsin were “probably stuck in special services’ (KGB) channels,” and in consequence, there is no proof that Gorbachev himself stonewalled.

On the Katyn Forest massacre, Gorbachev’s defense is that the “special file” containing the documents incriminating Stalin’s leadership in the mass murder of 15,000 Polish soldiers was part of a roomful of 2,000 files in the Kremlin he could not possibly have read.

Days before he was to transfer power to Yeltsin, Gorbachev says, he was approached by a staff member who insisted he study one of the files. He claims not to have opened it until he did so with Yeltsin on Dec. 23, 1991. He said he was “shocked” by the contents.

But Russian writer Lev Yelin, who has tried to trace the documents, found that Central Committee official Valery Boldin, who later became Gorbachev’s chief of staff, had possession of them in April, 1989. “To suggest Boldin did not ‘report on’ the file to Gorbachev is, of course, possible--but hard to believe,” Yelin concludes.

A secret memorandum to Gorbachev about Katyn, dated Feb. 22, 1990, was also found from Valentin M. Falin, former head of the Communist Party’s International Department. Two months later, Gorbachev’s government admitted that Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD--and not the Nazis--murdered the Poles, but it did not blame the Politburo.

In addition to these issues, mystery still shrouds many somber events of the Gorbachev years, such as the fate of secret Communist Party funds and the savage Soviet army attacks on nationalist demonstrators in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1989 and in Vilnius, Lithuania, two years later. Gorbachev has said he “feels bad” about some of his acts, but he has refused to give specifics.

In more general terms, the champion of the perestroika reforms is accused by Russians of one of two offenses, depending on their point of view: He either wantonly destroyed the Soviet Union and its 70-year-old socialist experiment, or hypocritically struggled to turn back the tide of his own reforms to preserve the essence of communism.

At any rate, one year after quitting the Kremlin, Gorbachev clearly has no domestic constituency. Recent accusations can only reinforce most Russians’ overwhelming sentiment, which is that he simply was an incompetent leader.

Asked last month “Who do you think did a better job as president,” Yeltsin or Gorbachev?, only 12.5% of the Russians polled chose Gorbachev. Yeltsin, whose popularity has plummeted, got 32%. (The other 55.5% couldn’t decide who was worse.)

As his years in power become a fading memory, the 61-year-old Gorbachev has hit upon an inspiring parallel for his life--that of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who resigned in disgust as president of France in 1946, only to return to power 12 years later at age 68.

“I am very much worried about how they are running the reforms today,” Gorbachev, sunk into one of his office’s four imitation leather armchairs, said of Yeltsin and his team. “If there is no change, I will have to rethink my position.”

Asked what that meant, he declined to elaborate. Quizzed by a Russian journalist on whether he plans to challenge Yeltsin in early presidential elections that could follow the constitutional referendum scheduled for April 11, he was coy.

“Let’s not tease the geese,” the former farm boy from southern Russia replied.

For most Russians, however, the man who was their leader for 6 1/2 years now has no more relevance than, say, Michael S. Dukakis does in the United States. Others regard him with the same loathing that former President Richard M. Nixon can still inspire.

Gorbachev, who boasted of a new Soviet federalism and a “socialist market” while in power, has not offered Russians a program transcending his old idees fixes. And he is virtually invisible to most Russians; his only regular access to public opinion is a monthly question-and-answer newspaper column.

Six days a week, Gorbachev usually arrives at 11 a.m. or noon at his think tank in a chauffeur-driven black Volga sedan, accompanied by two burly bodyguards. He still receives a snappy salute from the policeman who guards the front door. He climbs the stairs briskly, turns right and strolls down a long hall covered with a red runner carpet to office No. 209.

A parade of callers queues up outside the anteroom, which is occupied by a secretary and a watchful bodyguard. One typical afternoon, Gorbachev received a Belgian scientist of Russian extraction, lent his profile to a “photo opportunity” plugging a silver-bound volume of Orthodox religious icons that was to be auctioned by Sotheby’s and gave interviews to journalists from the United States and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

He works until 8 p.m. and has sandwiches sent in from the snack bar. The large desk boasts six telephones, a status symbol in Russia, and one is the coveted veche, or high-frequency communications network reserved for the country’s elite.

He got notice of his eviction from his spacious Moscow apartment on Christmas Day, 1991, the very day he resigned. State security agents showed up in his absence and told his wife, Raisa, that it was time to clear out. The Gorbachevs were gone by New Year’s Day, acquaintances say. They were offered another apartment in the same building, but it was a lot smaller.

In consequence, the former Soviet First Family usually lives at its big dacha, or country home, on the Rublyovskaya Highway outside the city, in a leafy rural colony where Stalin and his lieutenants often sequestered themselves.

Raisa Gorbachev, whose flair and style at her husband’s side took the West by storm in the mid-’80s, often accompanies her husband on his foreign trips now. But she has completely vanished from the public eye at home, where many Russians detested her expensive wardrobe, shrill Marxist orthodoxy and penchant for the limelight.

She has become a virtual recluse. Her only child, Irina, a physician, comes on weekend visits and brings her two daughters, Ksenia, 12, and Anastasia, 4 1/2.

Raisa Gorbachev’s health remains a concern. When the Gorbachevs were held captive at their vacation home in the Crimea during the attempted Communist putsch in August, 1991, she suffered a severe attack of hypertension. Her nerves shattered, she was temporarily unable to speak.

The 60-year-old daughter of railroad workers still experiences health difficulties stemming from that Crimean ordeal and has minor circulatory problems.

Overseas, the Gorbachevs remain honored guests, and he has raised huge sums for his foundation by making swings through the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries. He is far from having to live off his official pension, although just how much money he personally has is a closely guarded secret.

On the domestic political front, Gorbachev is not yet in overt opposition to Yeltsin, and he claims to share the same goals. When in power, however, Gorbachev could never bring himself to endorse private land ownership or a full-blown supply-and-demand economy.

He objects to Yeltsin’s privatization campaign, the end of consumer subsidies and other policies that have worsened most Russians’ lives.

“America is pushing Yeltsin to this,” he complained. “In America, they think only Yeltsin promises 100% private property, that only Yeltsin will stamp out communism to the very end. . . . It’s not stamping out we need, but reforming. . . .”

For now, there is a lull in the 5-year-old Gorbachev-Yeltsin feud, but it is hard to believe it will not erupt again. The Communist comrades-turned-adversaries have not spoken since March, Likhotal revealed.

Gorbachev’s nonprofit International Fund for Socio-Economic and Political Studies, commonly known as the “Gorbachev Fund,” was originally granted a four-building complex by Yeltsin, but it came under investigation by the Finance Ministry in 1992 for subletting some of its vast premises to other businesses and allegedly raking in huge profits.

Many of the purported violations seem technical and intended, like the cover-up charges, purely to discredit Gorbachev. But to make sure the former Soviet leader realizes who is now the boss, Yeltsin has reclaimed five-sixths of the foundation’s floor space, as well as Gorbachev’s sleek Zil limousine.

One of the three lower-status Volgas, a sort of socialist Ford Fairlane, that Gorbachev got in replacement was stolen from a guarded parking lot in October.

Gorbachev also lost his diplomatic passport that month for refusing to testify in a Constitutional Court hearing on the sordid past of the Soviet Communist Party. For the first time, the world saw Gorbachev committing contempt of court.

“It has turned out that he was not only the father of perestroika, but also a (Communist Party) general secretary in the old sense of the word. He concealed much from the people, and maybe, he is afraid of it now,” Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin charged.

Yeltsin’s campaign to cut Gorbachev down to size may be gearing up for a new phase in 1993. When he quit as Soviet president, Gorbachev was forced out of the country estate he occupied and into the smaller but still lavish state-owned dacha that he and his wife now call home.

But on Dec. 30, Yeltsin signed a decree liquidating state ownership of dachas, which are a perk much abused by government bureaucrats, and much resented by ordinary Russians.

“There has been no time to discuss the decree’s effect on the Gorbachevs,” Likhotal said. But at the Gorbachev Fund, they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In Gorbachev’s office on Leningradsky Prospekt, a copy of futurologist Alvin Toffler’s “Power Shift” lies conspicuously on his desk. It is one more clue that the former leader’s eyes are on what is to come.

“Yeltsin may lose. I told the Trud newspaper that he has reserves,” Gorbachev said. “But if he keeps acting like this, his time will rapidly run out.”