Soviet Union Will a Weak Democracy Spawn a Dictatorship?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Inflation runs riot, sapping an already weakened economy; people go cold and hungry. A weak democratic government fails to maintain order, and is vilified by nationalists furious at the country's fall from world power to beggary. An attempted coup designed to install a dictatorship collapses, and its leaders are tried for treason. But after a final economic breakdown marked by mass unemployment, fascists come to power with wide popular support and institute a ruthless totalitarianism.

Historical parallels are never exact, of course. The Soviet Union is not fated to replay this capsule history of Germany's Weimar Republic. But the possibility cannot be dismissed either. And this time the drama might not take as long as the nine-plus years that elapsed between the failure of Adolf Hitler's 1923 beer-hall putsch and the founding of the Third Reich.

Some experts fear trouble in Russia and other Soviet republics even this winter, if food shortages deepen into famine and provoke riots. "Perhaps the threat of dictatorship has been removed for the time being, but the danger persists," says former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who accurately foretold the failed August coup attempt by old-line communists. "I am afraid of uncontrolled, spontaneous ((crowd)) movements," he adds. "The people are tired, and food is lacking."

Lev Timofeyev, a prominent Russian republic economist, is more specific, and even gloomier. Says he: "If we do not introduce full-fledged private-property rights and freedom of private entrepreneurship within the next two months, we are in for such catastrophes and upheavals that they will sweep away ((Russian President Boris)) Yeltsin, ((Prime Minister Ivan)) Silayev and you and me. This country is already in the midst of a real economic and financial catastrophe. If the West does not help us, we are in for some very serious attempts to restore a fascist-type regime."

Moreover, even if Russia and the other republics somehow get through the winter and begin the economic shock treatment Timofeyev demands, they face a gargantuan long-term job of converting to a free-market economy, which may not bring prosperity for many years. Meanwhile, the nation is certain to suffer rising unemployment as inefficient industries are shut down and continued inflation as more and more prices are set free. That would be an explosive mix anywhere, but especially in the U.S.S.R. (or whatever loose confederacy may succeed it). Inefficient as the old communist economy was, it did provide jobs of a sort for everybody and a steady, if meager, supply of basic goods at low, subsidized prices; Soviet citizens for more than 70 years were conditioned to expect that from their government. Says a Moscow worker: "We had everything during ((Leonid)) Brezhnev's times. There was sausage in the stores. We could buy vodka. Things were normal."

But if there are disturbing resemblances to Weimar, there are also heartening differences. One is the diametrically opposite attitude of foreign governments. The victors of World War I were bent on humiliating and punishing Germany and saddled the Weimar regime with ruinous reparation payments that drained off badly needed resources. The winners of the cold war are warmly encouraging nascent democracy in what used to be the U.S.S.R. and are considering pumping in money and goods to prop it up.

Prospects that such aid will become a reality improved markedly last week. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, visiting Moscow, declared that help need not be delayed until a new union of Soviet republics actually begins carrying out sweeping economic reforms. Commitment to a credible plan, he said, would be enough. For his part, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced that the U.S.S.R. would withdraw its personnel from Cuba and eliminate economic subsidies, thus meeting a major condition the Bush Administration had laid down for American aid. Russian officials began talking about handing back to Japan the southern Kurile Islands, which were seized at the end of World War II. Tokyo has insisted on return of the islands as its principal condition for Japanese participation in any major aid program.

But it is not at all certain that aid will be either large or timely enough to rescue the economy. A common estimate in the West is that $15 billion to $20 billion a year for three years would be needed. Soviet officials have never given an overall estimate, but Gorbachev and Silayev last week asked the 12-nation European Community for a stunning $6 billion to $7 billion worth of food (grain, meat, butter, powdered milk) just to get through the first half of 1992. E.C. President Jacques Delors so far has talked of only an immediate $2 billion. There is a serious question, too, of how to distribute any additional help: Through what remains of the central government or through republics or even smaller political units?

Moscow is thronged these days with representatives of republics and even municipalities besieging foreign diplomats with separate pleas for help. But the political disorganization is so severe that even the aid already pledged cannot be properly distributed. The Bush Administration has offered to guarantee bank loans this year of $1.5 billion to the Soviet Union to enable it to buy American grain, but only $915 million has been advanced. Banks are balking at putting up the remaining $585 million. They fear the central government will either stretch out repayment of the U.S.S.R.'s foreign debt or parcel out that debt among the republics; some might be unable or unwilling to repay. The banks conceivably could lose the 2% of principal, and interest in excess of 4.5%, not covered by Washington's guarantee.

Meanwhile, the Soviet economy is imploding at an alarming rate. Grigori Yavlinsky, chief economic policymaker for the transitional central government, estimates that prices are rising 2% to 3% a week, and his figure is conservative; Yevgeni Yasin, another leading economist, puts the increase at 191% just in the first half of 1991. The Soviet mint is currently printing rubles at four times the 1987 rate. Money is becoming so worthless that growing numbers of citizens are turning to barter.

Total production so far this year has fallen 10%, and the decline for all 1991 might reach 15%. Food shortages occurred last winter because of distribution breakdowns, even though the grain crop came in at a near record 237 million tons. This year farmers seem likely to harvest only 190 million tons, and distribution is, if anything, worse. There is a real question of how much Western food sent in aid might spoil before reaching consumers.

The first essential for even moderating the slide is an agreement restoring some sort of economic cooperation among the republics. Without it, says Yasin, "I think we would have a 20% to 30% drop in production and inflation of 1,000%," a Weimar-like figure. Yavlinsky last week sent to the republics a draft of an agreement that would provide for a common banking system and a common currency -- the ruble -- and would make private property the basis for a new Soviet economy. But there are at least two competing plans being bruited about, and while the debate rages, the tide is running against any sort of cooperation. Republics are starting to set up customs posts and other hindrances to the movement of goods across their borders, and people are beginning to hoard food.

Authoritarianism is cropping up in some of the republics. The leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia and some Central Asian republics, while fiercely bent on independence from Moscow, are anything but lenient toward internal opposition. "There are a lot of Saddam Husseins arising in the Asian part of the country," warns Vladlen Sirotkin, a prestigious Soviet historian.

The major arena, however, is Russia, which by sheer size and wealth is sure to dominate any new union. Some intellectuals are already worried about the eclipse of the Supreme Soviet, the union-wide parliament, and the concentration of what central power exists in jerry-built executive bodies. Effective power has flowed largely to Yeltsin, whose habit of issuing frequent and sweeping decrees is making liberals apprehensive.

Few thinkers believe that an avowedly communist dictatorship can be re- established. Popular hatred of the last one runs too deep. But many do fear an alliance of former communist apparatchiks with Slavic nationalists who reject parliamentary democracy as un-Russian.

Even if such an alliance were formed, of course, it might be prevented from coming to power. Sheer self-interest may well push the republics, or at least most of the bigger ones, into an alliance that, combined with massive and timely Western aid, would stop the economic disintegration. And Russians have what German democrats in the Weimar period woefully lacked: forceful, popular leaders like Yeltsin -- who on the whole has been more democrat than autocrat -- St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoli Sobchak and Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov. Authoritarians as yet have no leader with any comparable clout. But a lawyer named Vladimir Zhirinovsky did run third in last June's Russian presidential election despite -- or because of -- his wild ideas (he now speaks of solving food shortages by invading the former East Germany with an army brandishing nuclear weapons). Says economist Timofeyev: "Right now, Zhirinovsky seems like a fool, but we have to remember that nobody took Adolf Hitler seriously until it was too late."

With reporting by James Carney and James O. Jackson/Moscow and Christopher Ogden with Baker