Apparatchiks at bay.

NOW THAT the dust has settled in the Kremlin . . . But does the dust there ever really settle before some new crisis stirs it up again? Having failed at the Party Conference in June to make the expected and necessary leadership changes, Gorbachev brought them off in October with a one-day political coup in traditional Soviet style. Gorbachev has emerged from the latest crisis greatly strengthened. But it is still easy to construct a potential majority against him in the Politburo in some future crisis, on the basis of those who are only partially and reluctantly committed to his policies. Difficulties threaten from every sidemass discontent, unmanageable industry, obstreperous bureaucrats, a rumbling Eastern Europe, unproductive agriculture, local nationalism, to name a few. In spite of Gorbachev's skills, a smooth evolution is highly improbable.

And though Gorbachev is far more aware of the need for "reform" than are the ruck of the ruling elite, he too is a product of the system, with only one foot in the future. We should not see him as having a completely sound understanding of the problems, or perfectly effective solutions, or the ability to put them fully into effect-let alone all three. We would not imagine this even of a Western statesman with far lesser problems. Politics simply isn't like that (though you might not gather this from Anglo-American analyses of a projected Gorbachevian future).

Meanwhile, what has happened in the last two years?

In one sense-nothing. Two years of plans and resolutions have produced no results. If anything, the standard of living has fallen: it was recently rated by a Soviet economist as between fortieth and fiftieth among the world's nations.

The few practical measures that were adopted were, in any case, inadequate. But even they were sabotaged by bureaucratic resistance. Finally, the important section of the leadership that knows that change is necessary, but had hoped to get results without too much trouble, has now had to face the facts. And this section has rid itself of most, though not yet all, of the political zombies from the Stalin-Brezhnev epochs.

The fall of Dobrynin, small stuff by Moscow standards, has looked more important in Western eyes, and been seen by some as a sop to the hard-liners. But even if Dobrynin was more realistic than the previous foreign-policy apparatchiks, he has not been associated with the "new thinking" as Foreign Minister Shevardnadze has-that is, the verbal (though not yet practical) attitude that the world should not be treated as merely an arena for confrontation and eventual Soviet triumph. The chairman of the new Party Foreign Policy Commission, Politburo member Yakovlev, has been a strong supporter of Gorbachev.

Yakovlev, Shevardnadze, and now Medvedev are the General Secretary-President's real group. But Gorbachev must have assembled a decisive majority for reform among the others. Even men like Ligachev saw the need, though they hoped to effect it using the old party machine. The political weakness of Ligachev and his like was that they had no alternative program. And now that old methods have been proved bankrupt, the leadership as a whole sees (at least for now) that the immediate problem is the bureaucratic machine itself

HE HUGE SECOND- and third-level feudal bureaucracy in the Soviet Union has defended its privileges in a primitive, semiconscious way. The awfulness of the economy Stalin created is now evident, and understood in the West. Few, however, quite realize the psychological impact of the terror. As the Soviet press admits, the -masses were largely beaten into servilemindedness (though they remain incapable of mindless outbursts). But worse still is the apparatchik at bay. Edward Crankshaw, not long before his recent death, commented on the middle ranks of Soviet officialdom: "Their sycophancy, their barefaced lying, their treachery, their cowardice, are so blatant, their ignorance so stultifying, their stupidity so absolute, that I have found it impossible to convey it with any credibility to those fortunate enough never to have encountered it."

That is the crucial problem the Politburo faces. We must surely sympathize. It has taken two years for its members to work up the nerve to face the monster. But there seems to be a firm intention at last, not merely to enact reforms, but actually to impose them by force on this huge class that would otherwise abort them. It is true that even the most radical measures so far proposed will not be enough. And the next few years will see crises that will certainly shake the confidence of some of the leadership. They will perhaps bring about retreats, compromises, temporary reversions to something like the old system. That will solve nothing: the choice is either evolution or catastrophe. The Politburo will face further critical decisions in a year or two. Meanwhile, at least the path to progress remains open. Look for a Bentsen Lunch Club, membership $20,000 in 1989.