RUSSIA : Memo to Yeltsin: How to Move Beyond Chechnya : A horrible military misadventure requires a reassessment of the new house that democracy has built.

When Leo Tolstoy, more than a century ago, cast about for an allegory to capture the Russian imperial government’s failure to vanquish the free spirit of the Chechens, he chose the image of a thistle run over and crushed by a cartwheel but, by day’s end, risen from the dust--as raw, proud and defiant as ever. Today, the cartwheel of history is a Russian tank but Tolstoy’s allegory remains telling. No matter how much violence the Kremlin is prepared to apply to the breakaway region, Chechnya will remain the prickliest flower in the garden of the Russian Federation.

Accordingly, Russian politicians must reassess their understanding of their new state and the meaning of Russian federalism. Otherwise, what is now a deep government crisis--indeed, Boris N. Yeltsin could, in effect, no longer be in charge--may deteriorate into political chaos and insubordination in the armed forces, Interior Ministry and the Federal Counterintelligence Service. Any reassessment should start from these points:

* Yeltsin is still Russia’s first popularly elected president and, as such, the single most powerful guarantor of democratic reforms and the rights of property in Russia.

* Russian reformers who are excoriating Yeltsin for betraying them and their democratic principles should take a long, hard look at themselves and their role in pushing the Russian president into the arms of administrative and military pragmatists. It was the reformers’ poor performance and miscalculations in the elections of December, 1993, that made it necessary for Yeltsin to broaden his political base. More important, it was the reformers’ inability--indeed, unwillingness--to mend fences among themselves and to close ranks behind the president, even on marginal issues, that made Yeltsin a hostage of military fire breathers.

* Yeltsin should impose an immediate moratorium on military action in Chechnya and withdraw Russian forces from around Grozny. At the same time, he should appoint an intergovernmental committee, headed by a politician with roots and political experience in the region, with a mandate to begin unconditional negotiations with the political leadership in the Chechen republic. Even the issue of sovereignty should be on the table, though with the proviso that independence should not be immediate.

* Yeltsin should obtain the immediate resignations of Oleg I. Lobov, head of the Security Council; Pavel S. Grachev, minister of defense; Sergei V. Stepashin, head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, and Nikolai D. Yegorov, nationalities minister. All four have been strong and uncompromising advocates of the use of large-scale violence in Chechnya, and they should have no part in the realignment of political forces that will follow the Chechnya debacle.

It’s hard to know whose advice turned out to be the most odious but looking at the history of the conflict, the stigma should be on Stepashin. It was his agency’s bungled and utterly counterproductive covert actions against Gen. Dzhokar Dudayev, the Chechen president, that forced Yeltsin’s heavy hand. Escalating during the eight months leading up to the invasion, the counterintelligence service’s operations culminated in a great public embarrassment for Moscow when some 70 Russian officers, recruited by the service with a nod from Grachev, were taken prisoner in Grozny after their unsuccessful attempt to seize the city by force and topple Dudayev’s government.

* Yeltsin can renew his credentials as an advocate of democratic reform by solemnly reaffirming his commitment to holding parliamentary and presidential elections as scheduled in December, 1995, and June, 1996, respectively.

* Anyone advocating a solution that brings Russia closer to a dictatorship should be run out of town. This is not a matter of political preference but one of Russia’s survival as a state. During the last three years, as Russia moved toward a new federalism, the country’s many regions developed both a taste for relative autonomy and an infrastructure, more or less, for running their own affairs. Only a Moscow government that respects their autonomy, is skilled at political horse-trading and is capable of offering the regions reliable services can hope to keep them in the federation.

* The West must exercise caution lest it compound the damage. What the advocates of democracy in Russia fear most is that under the influence of graphic media coverage of the conflict, Western politicians may pronounce Russia irredeemable and begin to push for a speedy expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Such an outcome would compel even the most pro-Western of Russia’s politicians to give up their dream of integrating Russia into the West’s political, economic, military and cultural sphere. The Berlin Wall, or some modern version of the Iron Curtain, would rise on Russia’s borders.

* The Chechnya crisis is part of a process, not a onetime conflagration that will consume Russia and its first democratically elected government. Russians tend to be impatient with the Byzantine complexities, contradictions and puzzles of history. And they are wont to revel in visions of an imminent apocalypse. This is one reason why the debacle, horrible as it is, has been seen by more than a few otherwise sensible Russian politicians as the beginning of the end of Russia’s experiment with democracy. For example, in characterizing Yeltsin’s government as “a police regime supported only by fascists and ultranationalists,” Sergei Yushenkov, chairman of the Duma committee on defense and a leading member of Russia’s Choice Party, seems to be indulging in an apocalyptic revelry in order to excuse himself from continuing to press Yeltsin to seek compromise.

* Russia’s democracy is only three years old. It is facing the consequences of, and being held responsible for, decisions made by rulers long gone from the scene, as it has inherited 300 years of brutal, autocratic and totalitarian history. To begin to untangle it will require generations. Moreover, both players in and observers of Russian politics must reconcile themselves to the fact that no matter who runs the Russian government, errors, sometimes even tragic error, will be committed. Fairness to Russia requires patience and understanding.

“The Federalist Papers” contends that the Constitution was conceived not as a prescription for virtuous action but as a mechanism for dealing squarely with the consequences of political mistakes. Broadly speaking, Russia’s society, its press and its civil-rights activists have lived up to their constitutional responsibility. The other part of Russia’s new democracy--its government and its reform politicians--shall be judged by the way they deal with the consequences of their own dangerous mistakes.