The red blues.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV flies home from the applause of Washington to a more demanding audience of Muscovites, who delivered their verdict on perestroika by clearing the supermarket shelves in a rush of panic buying, and by electing Gorbachev's principal domestic critic, Boris Yeltsin, to the presidency of the Russian Republic. Soviet troops meanwhile shot down a dozen rioting Armenians in Yerevan, and Lithuania maintained its refusal to submit to Moscow's will.

On paper, President Gorbachev has all the powers he needs to handle the situation, including that of martial law. Not to be overlooked, either, are the retrospective laws blocking the application of specific articles of the Constitution. Thus, the Lithuanian declaration of independence (under Article 72, which unconditionally guarantees the right "freely to secede") came on March 11, and the law making it illegal was dated April 3. The day before, the Supreme Soviet had banned incitement to ethnic or territorial division, with draconian penalties for separatist agitation.

But what if the troops start to desert en masse and even more officers get murdered? (Last year's tally was 59: an official figure.) Gorbachev's powers are on paper, and powers do not necessarily mean authority. Who Gets the Missiles?

AT THIS TIME, let's face it, the internal empire (essentially, the czarist empire, Leninized) is splitting at the seams. But in two major spheres, the Soviet Union is very real: weaponry and economic resources. Who is to control those scattered intercontinental or intermediate-range nuclear missiles if the empire splits? Who will grab the Siberian oil and what's left of the oily Caucasus? Little Lithuania quickly faced the problem of empty auto tanks.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev continues his quite remarkable balancing act. There is a widespread view in the West that, as a Time magazine cover back in February put it, "Gorbachev turns his back on Lenin." Wrong. The most significant aspect of his major speech of April 20, on the anniversary of Lenin's birth, lay in the fact that he still finds it necessary to invoke Lenin's name to justify perestroika. Perestroika," said Gorbachev, "reveals the true Lenin to us." But what else can he do? The regime still has no basis for legitimacy apart from Leninism. If Gorbachev were to stand for election and be returned by the measured will of the voters, that would be another matter. But there seems to be no question of that. Of course the speech was peppered with choice Newspeak phrases, but it also contained a number of coded messages which could bear a quite sinister interpretation, such as: "The Bolshevik art of convincing the people of one's correctness needs to be revived." Indeed. Gorbachev also called for protection against "informal groups" just 11 days before the May Day parade, when informal groups drove him and his Politburo colleagues away from the Lenin mausoleum. But it is not only opposition from "informal groups" that must now concern him. All the signs are that the great unraveling of the Communist Party itself is looming ahead. To be precise, at the end of June, when the 28th Congress of the ruling Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) is scheduled to take place. At that time, assuming the leaders of the "moderates" stick to their intentions, the Party is due to split right down the middle. Who are these moderates? They certainly include, most prominently, Boris Yeltsin, who is far more able than the facile label of "maverick" would indicate. They also include the Vorkuta miners, whose strike last year shook President Gorbachev. The issue was not the absence of soap, as Pravda's untruth had it, but the more fundamental issue of the Party's monopoly of power. That is why the moderates intend t force the issue by hiving off and re naming themselves, collectively, th Social Democratic Party. But (a big "but") they want to do more than hive off: they intend to hang on to the Party property now under their control: buildings, printing presses, television equipment, stocks of newsprint cars, apartments, dachas: the lot. Unlike the shoestring dissident with their courageous little samizdat sheets, these people are rich with th spoils of past Party expropriation. And they intend to stay rich. In London the other day, one of the miners' leaders spelled out the grand design for me.

We talked about wider issues, too, such as the cohesion and unity of the USSR, and I have to say that the visitor made me short of breath. Lithuanian independence? Georgian assertiveness? Kazakh restiveness? Small stuff. The man was talking about independence for Russia. If Russia goes independent, what's left for Mikhail Gorbachev to side over? El

Mr. Crozier, an NR contributing editor, is the author of most recently, The Gorbachev Phenomenon.