A DAY FOR THANKFUL EX-SOVIETS; TWO ATHLETES FIND GOOD LIFE IN USA.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

When three former Soviet Republics recently agreed to a U.S.-supported plan that will carry oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the West, Russian President Boris Yeltsin erupted like a geyser.

You could hardly blame him for his outburst. It wasn't that long ago oil kept Communism afloat, with athletics serving as its foghorn. The Soviet Union used Siberian oil money to keep its people fed and its factories running and a sleek state-run sports machine to blazon Communism's presence.

Since the Iron Curtain was drawn to let democracy in in the late 1980s, the former Soviet Union has been stripped of minerals and of men.

Take Ukraine, which lost a liquid asset and a frozen asset to the West and is poorer for it. Swimmer Lenny Krayzelburg and hockey player Oleg Tverdovsky rode the wave of Perestroika to Southern California's shores and found simple abundance sitting there for them like sand dollars on the beach.

The high tide of prosperity has lapped them both, but neither has been dragged down by success's undertow.

Tverdovsky, 23, a gifted defenseman for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, is three days younger than San Diego Chargers quarterback Ryan Leaf but infinitely more mature. You won't hear him screaming at his general manager, Pierre Gauthier, unless Gauthier is about to step in front of a speeding semitrailer.

Krayzelburg, 24, is four-and-a-half months younger than exiled NFL running back Lawrence Phillips but inherently more responsible. You won't see him blowing off a 6 a.m. workout unless he has a temperature of 104.

Everything Tverdovsky and Krayzelburg know about life, they learned in the former Soviet Union: Cherish family. Value hard work. Appreciate life's little luxuries.

Why, the propaganda they spread is enough to make you glad for glasnost.

Krayzelburg emigrated to Studio City from Odessa with his parents and younger sister in 1989, around the time Soviet citizens were facing their first multicandidate elections. Freedom of religion and the press would follow, but Oleg and Yelena Krayzelburg were a few steps ahead of the crusade.

They left their homeland so their children wouldn't be singled out for being Jewish. Too, they were concerned Lenny, then 15, might be drafted into the Russian Army to fight in the Soviet Union's war against Afghanistan.

He already had been enlisted to serve his country in another arena. At the age of 9 he was deemed an Olympic prospect in swimming and steered into a government-sponsored training program.

If he had swum faster as an age-grouper, the Soviet government probably would have balked at letting his family leave the country. The Krayzelburgs got their exit visas, but their struggle was just beginning.

Money was tight, so Krayzelburg worked to help make ends meet. His swimming suffered in the juggling act. After graduating from Fairfax High, he enrolled at Santa Monica College and swam well enough there to earn a free ride to USC.

In 1997, two years after becoming a U.S. citizen, Krayzelburg set his first American record, in the 200-meter backstroke. In August, he broke the world records in the 100 and 200 backstrokes to establish himself as America's brightest hope for an Olympic gold medal in men's swimming in 2000.

Krayzelburg won't let his future obscure his past. In 1998 he returned to Odessa for the first time since leaving nine years earlier. He visited the pool where he had trained. The once-beautiful facility was a bone-dry, cracked shell of its former self.

``It was sad to see,'' said Krayzelburg, who has talked with enough elite Russian swimmers to know times are tough all over the former Soviet Union. Russia's top athletes used to lead relatively privileged lives, but they now are having to support themselves and their families while training - just like U.S. athletes 20 years ago.

Krayzelburg, meantime, is getting by nicely on sponsorships and U.S. Swimming stipends, an irony that isn't lost on him.

``I look at my parents and how they've struggled and the truth is, it would have been better for their lives to have stayed in (Ukraine),'' he said. ``They've made huge sacrifices for their children. That's why it's so special for me to be swimming well. If my parents never are as financially well-off as they were before, they know for sure their decision to move here was the right one.''

In 1991 Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union and the world of a 15-year-old hockey player from the coal-rich city of Donetsk suddenly expanded well beyond Moscow's city limits. That's when the Mighty Ducks' Tverdovsky began to look at the NHL as a destination and not just a dreamland.

His life since then looks so charmed, you're tempted to administer the white-glove test for magic pixie dust. Drafted second overall by the Ducks in 1994, Tverdovsky was playing in the NHL at the age of 18 for substantially more money than the $500 a month he made skating with a team in Moscow.

It's true Tverdovsky has made an NHL All-Star team and will make $1.7 million this year with the Ducks, who traded him to Phoenix (nee Winnipeg) in 1996, only to re-acquire him in June. But his success has not come without a price.

In 1996 Tverdovsky's mother Alexandra was kidnapped outside an apartment building in Donetsk and held for $200,000 ransom by a man who once coached her son.

She was rescued after 11 days but not before Tverdovsky's sense of security was shattered. Now, when he returns to Russia, he often travels with bodyguards and ``my head's always on a swivel,'' he said. ``I have to be very careful. Put it this way: I don't make new friends. And I never go alone anywhere.''

Tverdovsky's parents have been stuck in Moscow since January because of visa problems. There they have stayed in an apartment the size of Tverdovsky's garage in Anaheim Hills.

The situation has taken its toll on him. He was frantic in September when he saw a report on television that a bomb had ripped through an apartment building near where his parents are staying.

``It's no fun when you hear stuff like that,'' Tverdovsky said.

With every news report from home, he appreciates his new life a little more.

``It's not just the money part,'' he said. ``If you want something here, you just go get it. There aren't lines, there aren't shortages. It's amazing the difference in the level of life. People who live here don't know how lucky they have it.''

On this day, it's worth pondering.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) KRAYZELBURG

(2) TVERDOVSKY