COLUMN ONE : A Path to Capitalism Via a Cult? : In Turkmenistan, the name and image of its president and onetime Communist boss are everywhere. He says the country ‘is going its own way’ on reforms. Critics cite a cost in human rights.

The first hint you get that this is not just your average post-Soviet republic comes as the plane is still circling over this sweltering capital.

The disembodied flight attendant voice that normally just tells you to fasten your seat belt reels off an introduction to Turkmenistan that goes, in part, like this:

“Members of various ethnic groups all live like one big family in our country. They all unanimously--twice--elected the president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurad Atayevich Niyazov, a worthy son of his people, who has been awarded the title Hero of Turkmenistan and the gold medal of ‘Altyn Ay.’ One of his first decrees after being reelected was a decree on the free use of water, gas and electricity beginning in January, 1993.”

Down below is the Saparmurad Niyazov canal--formerly known as the Kara Kum Canal for the desert it crosses--as well as Niyazov schools and Niyazov collective farms. One of the main drags of Ashgabat is named Saparmurad-Leader-of-All-the-Turkmen Avenue. There is also a street and a women’s group named for the leader’s mother. Soon, Niyazov’s face will be on the new currency, the manat, as well.

The country of 4 million, tucked in the far south of formerly Soviet Central Asia above Iran, appears to have elected to become the most outstanding banana republic of the former Soviet Union, transforming its former Communist Party boss into an eastern despot.

But it is not that simple.

To begin with, Niyazov, a white-haired, plump-cheeked man with heavy black brows and a warm brown gaze, is far more reminiscent of former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev than of the world’s kooky dictators.

Turkmenistan, he repeats firmly, again and again, is reforming, but “it is going its own way,” at its own pace, thank you very much, however it may look to the outside.

For another thing, Turkmen seem sincerely happy with their form of government. And why shouldn’t they be? They earn decent salaries, by Russian standards. But bread here still costs just half a penny per loaf, and, as the flight attendant advertised, all utilities are free.

There are not--and never have been--stormy demonstrations on the streets of Ashgabat. Niyazov has introduced a campaign he calls “10 Years of Well-Being”--in effect, 10 years in which he is demanding political stability as the country makes a slow, steady transition from communism to capitalism, from Soviet subjection to true independence.

“We don’t deny that the toughest period was when the Soviet Union collapsed,” he said in an interview in his cavernous office, lined with white silk chairs. But “we didn’t start to copy things done elsewhere. Everyone’s mistake was that they listened to what the West told them about how to build a democratic society, and all started to shout slogans of democracy instead of creating the basis for a democratic society.

“Moscow showed us a bad example,” he said. “That you have to make noise, shout, go out into the streets, criticize all the past and grab power. That worked for some people. But our position was to deeply think over the transition period. In Western Europe and America it’s easy to judge us--you’ve forgotten your transition period.”

Instead, Niyazov says, Turkmenistan decided to plod, carefully, gradually, toward reform, always maintaining a strong safety net for the poor with massive government subsidies. It has begun all the classic moves toward sloughing off socialism, from giving land to private farmers to selling off state-owned factories--but only just.

The watchword, for now, is not reform but stability, the unswerving intent to avoid the turmoil besetting most of the rest of the former Soviet Union.

“Here, we do things not with jumps but smoothly,” said Nazik Chariyeva, a teacher of farming who was decked out this day in a long maroon velvet smock for a relative’s wedding. “In Moscow, they go with jumps and it leads to nothing good.”

The Turkman way looks inviting, especially to the Russians up north who are still smarting under the shock therapy that has thrown their economy into a tailspin. “There are more chances for success (in Turkmenistan) than in any other republic of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily wrote recently, marveling that Niyazov is the only leader of a former Soviet republic who has kept his seat since Gorbachev came to power in 1985.

But the Turkman way has a price: a small but undeniable dose of repression.

The Helsinki Watch, which monitors human rights, found numerous instances of silenced dissent and press censorship when its researchers made a swing through Turkmenistan this spring.

The country has no political prisoners and certainly no political killings, but it maintains a level of harassment of its handful of dissidents on the level of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s under its former leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev. Dissidents have been refused exit visas to attend conferences and been prevented from meeting with foreigners, a Helsinki Watch report said.

“Turkmenistan is mired in an abusive Communist past and is failing as a new state in its obligation to protect human rights,” Helsinki Watch director Jeri Laber declared in July.

When Niyazov visited Washington in March, President Clinton failed to meet with him. The Administration said it was “not convinced” that Turkmenistan’s human rights practices were up to par.

Even Gorbachev, who says he considers Niyazov an old friend, criticizes his policies, saying he has “lowered himself to the level of his people” instead of leading them into the modern world.

But Niyazov argues tirelessly that he is, indeed, bringing his people into the modern world--at a rate dictated by their own primitive starting point.

Turkmenistan was considered the poorest of the Soviet republics, with a frightening infant mortality rate; scientists believe that only 700 of every 1,000 children born here reach age 16.

It also has hideous environmental problems. These stem from the careless, widespread use of pesticides and other land- and water-damaging practices connected with the growing of cotton, which is this nation’s top agricultural product. An ill-conceived project to dam part of the Caspian Sea caused wide ecological havoc; 50% of Turkmenistan is said to lack decent drinking water.

The people are not so far removed from their old nomad ways, still drinking lots of cold camel milk--known as chal and tasting like carbonated plain yogurt--and revering their horses, the ancient Akhaltekinskaya breed from which Arabian steeds sprang. Niyazov recently bestowed a stunning specimen on British Prime Minister John Major. (He pointedly refrained from offering one to Clinton.)

And parents often still demand a “bride price” for daughters given in marriage. Even under communism, the old structures of tribe and clan dominated.

That, Niyazov says, is why he has allowed a personality cult around him to develop, even though he finds the weight of it “heavy.” The people, he says, “need someone to believe in.”

“This is the East,” says his press secretary, Durdi-Mukhamet Kurbanov. “If the leader has no authority, the people won’t believe in him.”

So sculptors at the statue factory in Ashgabat have their hands full with orders for busts of Niyazov, and at Ashgabat’s artistic center, Niyazovs proliferate among the stacked canvases. The Ashgabat Carpet factory turns out carpet-portraits of Niyazov, and the president, with wry humor, handed a recent visitor a small obsidian paperweight with his portrait on it and offered entry to the “cult.”

“We’re grateful to Saparmurad that he managed to steal a quiet corner in times like these,” said artist Vera Gylliyeva. “When we started to draw the portraits, we did it from the heart.”

Overall, a high-placed Western diplomat said, some rights are violated in Turkmenistan “but in general, no one seems to care. It appears to affect only a few people directly.”

Also, he said, “there is a much lighter hand with regard to potential domestic opposition” since Niyazov was snubbed by Clinton.

Niyazov argues that the political stability his regime fosters allows it to concentrate wholly on improving the economy, in sharp contrast to Russia, where constant political battles hinder economic progress.

And the economy appears ready to boom. Aside from the deep red carpets (known as the Bokhara type) that it turns out, Turkmenistan is the fourth-largest producer of natural gas in the world, and its cotton is of high quality. Its territory appears to be full of untapped oil and gas, and foreign businessmen are scoping it out in droves.

“After just 1 1/2 years of independence, Turkmenistan has accomplished so much,” Foreign Minister Khalykberdy Atayev said.

“It looks like one big construction site--the hotel complex outside the city, the railroad to Iran. . . . We have so many foreign delegations we don’t have time to receive them.”

Officials predict that in the next two or three years, foreigners will invest $160 million in Turkmenistan’s oil fields.

Niyazov’s cautious policies extend to foreign ties. He has adopted a slogan of “positive neutrality” that basically means Turkmenistan has no interest in Central Asian turmoil outside its borders and simply wants to stay on good terms with everyone.

He has also distanced himself from the Commonwealth of Independent States by refusing to sign its charter, saying he wanted nothing that even hinted at the old Moscow rule.

Turkmenistan, rich in resources, can forge ahead on its own, Niyazov maintains.

His government gets a resounding vote of confidence from Nurberdy Nuryagdiev, a grape farmer, who says of Niyazov: “He’s an excellent president. Before, we were like we were in prison. Now, we go where we can. If you work well, you live well. We just want life to be peaceful. Everything else is nonsense.”