BACK TO THE U.S.S.R.? : RUSSIA IS IN FLUX, POLITICALLY, ECONOMICALLY, SOCIALLY, CULTURALLY. NO MATTER HOW RESIDENTS VOTE NEXT WEEK, THEY MAY GET SOMETHING QUITE DIFFERENT, EITHER MUCH BETTER OR MUCH WORSE, THAN WHAT WE SEE TODAY.

Byline: Stephen Sestanovich 

IS Boris Yeltsin a democrat or an autocrat?

Do Russia's Communists intend to re-Stalinize the country, or have they learned their lesson?

Ask many experts what the presidential election June 16 is likely to produce, and one hears a lot about continuity. Whatever their deepest desires, it seems the Communists, if victorious, will be held in check by the economic transformation that has already taken place.

They know that they can't turn back the clock without bloodshed. As for Yeltsin, whatever promises he makes now, his re-election will only bring the final petering out of reform, along with cronyism and corruption on a vast scale.

These predictions treat inertia as the most powerful force shaping Russia's future. Yet the past decade - the past century, for that matter - should make us wary of such forecasts.

Russia is in flux, politically, economically, socially, culturally. No matter how the residents vote, they may get something quite different, either much better or much worse, than what we see today.

Start with a Communist victory. In the short run, the main reason to think that it could produce real turmoil is, paradoxically, the very reason that experts invoke as their best hope for stability: the strength of the market.

Yes, many Russians now own property, and this is a barrier of sorts to the quick restoration of a command economy. But the standoff between a Communist government and Russia's new capitalist class would be precarious at best and under certain circumstances completely unmanageable.

Consider how easily the value of Russia's currency could be destroyed. Over the past year, the ruble has held steady at around 5,000 to the dollar. This has been a substantial achievement of government policy, but it could quickly evaporate if people with money conclude that a Communist victory will put in doubt the future value of their rubles.

As it happens, the government has kept the ruble so strong that some sort of slide is probably inevitable, no matter who wins. A Communist victory could turn this slide into an avalanche, with extreme implications.

If the ruble suddenly drops in value to, say, 20,000 to the dollar, the Central Bank is not likely to be either willing or able to prop it up. Once the national currency has become worthless, the real issue will be the largest one of all: how to run the economy.

Soon enough, and far sooner than any of its members ever expected, a restored Communist government will be fixing prices, wages, interest rates - everything.

For many party members, such control will seem merely the natural order of things, but it will not produce the stability they claim to remember from the past.

Instead, the old black market will revive. Corruption, protection rackets and extortion will be more widespread. Enterprises and industries that won't cooperate with the new order or can't survive the upheaval will be renationalized.

Turmoil in Russia will also do serious damage to other former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, whose economies are still joined at the hip with their large neighbor.

So much for the cheerful view that the worst the Communists can do is weaken Russia itself.

After almost five years of effort, the Russian government is only now stabilizing the economy. Against this background, to expect continuity if the Communists regain power is to ignore one of the main ways in which markets can destabilize governments - by panicking.

When a half-reformed Russian economy meets a less than half-reformed Communist Party, there will be many reasons to panic.

As for those who say nothing will change in the event of a Yeltsin victory, they discount the most important source of dynamism now operating in Russian politics - the electoral process itself.

They treat all the most dispiriting features of the current regime as permanent: the behind-the-scenes influence of the president's buddies at the expense of serious and capable officials; the dangerous autonomy of the military, police and KGB; and the fact that constructive policy so often sinks in a sea of intrigue, special favors and incompetence.

Until the election campaign began, it was hard to refute the claim that this was the true and final form of Yeltsin's rule. Yet the campaign itself has made the balance of power inside the government look far more fluid.

Real reformers have gained influence. Those whose main skill is barking orders in the Kremlin are on the defensive.

The first hint of this reversal has been the return to favor of Anatoly Chubais, once the capable overseer of all economic reform policy. After the Communists did well in last December's parliamentary elections, Yeltsin made Chubais the fall guy and publicly vilified him. Now he has brought him back as a pivotal figure in the campaign.

The man who embodies the new cronyism - the head of the presidential guard, Gen. Aleksandr Korzhakov - has been openly repudiated by Yeltsin for proposing to cancel the election.

Even more revealing has been the public - though still hesitant - negotiations between Yeltsin and Grigory Yavlinsky, his most formidable democratic rival.

At the beginning of the year, both men were widely expected to lean far to the left in competing for Communist votes. Instead, each has adopted anti-Communist rhetoric and acknowledged the logic of an alliance between them.

A united front has not materialized and probably cannot be consummated until after the first round of voting. But Yeltsin's eagerness for Yavlinsky's support shows the impact of electoral competition.

To win, the president needs precisely those voters who won't back the Communists but have to be reassured that they are choosing something better than the tawdry status quo.

These stirrings are giving life to what seemed, at the outset of the campaign, the least likely of all possible results: the revival of reform.

Not since Yeltsin won a national referendum in April 1993 has a Russian election produced a reformist victory. Two subsequent parliamentary elections, in December 1993 and December 1995, taught the president that his reformers were a political liability.

And each time he responded by dismissing the most prominent among them.

The current campaign may teach Yeltsin a different lesson. His return from the dead - the near-certainty that he will now make it into the runoff - has been achieved almost entirely through the support of pro-reform voters. If, between rounds, he is propelled further by an alliance with Yavlinsky and wins, Russian politics will be different.

Society will be no less divided, Parliament will be no less Communist, the state bureaucracy will be no less corrupt and enfeebled. But political momentum may, even if only briefly, be on the side of those with a progressive vision of their country's future. They are already maneuvering to make sure that they can use it.

Americans should not be mesmerized by either of the possibilities sketched here. But we should see that they are possibilities. And because they are, it is not enough to be prepared only for continuity.

The Clinton administration favors Yeltsin but says it will do business with whoever is elected, a position that will look foolishly complacent if things go badly. By contrast, those who insist that Yeltsin is little better than the Communists will find it harder to see, or support, a reformist opening if it materializes.

It always seems safe to bet on continuity, until things change.

For anyone who is sure they won't, Russia's election may be storing up surprises.

MEMO: Stephen Sestanovich is vice president for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Communist candidate: Gennady Zyuganov.

(2) Reaching for votes: Boris Yeltsin, Russia's incumbent president, has made many promises during his campaign.

Associated Press