Yeltsin Alone Wears the White Hat : Russia: The U.S. spent trillions to contain Communism. Why not a little more to bolster democracy?

To borrow an expression from Ross Perot, the American Establishment just does not get it.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March of 1985, the U.S. government, the Congress and the media sneered at his announced policies of perestroika and glasnost and accused him of trying to lull the “free world” into a false sense of security. By the time they got around to realizing Gorbachev was a reformer, he had, by and large, ceased to be one by siding with hardliners and appointing to top government offices the very people who would engineer the coup against him.

By the time Gorbachev had become America’s darling, he was one of the least respected politicians in Russia. When Boris Yeltsin became the first president in Russia’s history to be elected by the people in free, multiple-choice elections, America’s opinion makers smiled disdainfully and not so privately called him an alcoholic and a boor. It took a failed coup and a wonderfully telegenic picture of Yeltsin standing on a tank for that view to begin to change.

But not even those events of August, 1991, and the following breakup of the seemingly monolithic Soviet Union in December of that year had any real impact on the crucial issue of tangible support for reform in Russia. They still didn’t get it and, unbelievable as this may seem, many of them still don’t.

And yet the issues should be easy to understand.

Reform, both political and economic, is being blocked in Russia by a legislative body elected in 1990 in what were not truly democratic elections. That body bases its authority on a constitution foisted on the U.S.S.R. in 1977, under Leonid Brezhnev, which contradicts any kind of reform, as do those who derive their power from it. Black and white issues are rare in politics, but this is one: Yeltsin and his supporters are for democratic reform, the Russian parliament is against reform.

Nevertheless, there still exist influential people in America who question the need to aid Yeltsin and who express their doubts in three basic ways: We don’t really have any control over the events; we should provide aid but with conditions; we should not put too much support behind one man, because there are other reformers out there.

Did the United States have any control over events in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko? But that did not stop it from spending trillions of dollars to “contain Soviet aggression.” So why now this uncommon hesitancy to spend just a fraction of that to bolster Russian democracy? Over 4 1/2 decades of Cold War, the United States rendered aid to the most repressive regimes without any conditions or questions asked, as long as they were anti-communist. Why not do the same for a nation that is experiencing agonizing sacrifice for the sake of democracy?

Yeltsin is the only legitimate representative and choice of the Russian people. If all support should not be accorded to him, then who should get it? The unnamed mythical reformers “out there” who will find themselves in a new Gulag, should Yeltsin and democracy fail?

It is high time the United States got with it. By that I mean unequivocally showing support for Yeltsin and democracy in a way any Russian citizen can relate to. Most immediately that would mean at least three steps:

* President Clinton offering to go to Moscow to meet Yeltsin. Do not force Yeltsin to make that request.

* Getting the other C7 members to join Clinton in Moscow, showing a united front to both supporters and detractors of reform in Russia.

* Canceling the $83 billion debt accrued mainly under Brezhnev and partly under Gorbachev, which the Yeltsin government cannot and the hardline anti-Western government that would replace him will not repay.

On April 25, the people of Russia will support Yeltsin and democracy, all the pain and suffering notwithstanding. There should be no question about that. There is really only one question: Will the United States be on the Russian people’s--and Yeltsin’s--side?