Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 5, 1993                   TAG: 9310050212
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SAUL FRIEDMAN NEWSDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

DID WEST PUSH RUSSIA TO CHANGE TOO FAST?

But key lawmakers, along with American and Russian experts, are suggesting that unrelenting pressure from U.S. and Western financial institutions for quick reforms toward a market economy can be blamed in part for many of Russia's problems and the deep suffering among the population that contributed to the size and bitterness of Yeltsin's opposition.

In addition, several of the experts criticized as simplistic and inaccurate the view of the struggle as one between the good guys, led by Yeltsin, and the bad guys in the Parliament. One expert, Russian legal and political scholar Nina Belyaeva, on leave from a Moscow think tank to teach at Georgetown University, said, "It is disturbing to see so many in the U.S. portraying those in the Parliament as wanting to return to Stalinism. That's amazing and wrong. Many of Yeltsin's opponents have been leaders of reform and democracy."

President Clinton drew the stark battle lines between Yeltsin and his opponents when he told the cheering convention of the AFL-CIO in San Francisco on Monday, "The United States continues to stand firm in its support of President Yeltsin because he is Russia's democratically elected leader. It is clear that the opposition forces started the conflict and that President Yeltsin had no other alternative but to try and restore order."

Clinton added that the United States should support Yeltsin "as long as he is the person who embodies a commitment to democracy and . . . letting the Russian people chart their own course."

In Washington, Strobe Talbott, Clinton's special adviser on the former Soviet Union had been in touch with U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow through the uncertain and frightening night.

But in the aftermath, he insisted, "We have not at any point been in the position of offering advice to Yeltsin on how to manage the extraordinarily complex political life of his country. . . . We don't feel that that would be appropriate, and . . . we don't feel that he needs our advice. I think he has demonstrated leadership and skill throughout."

Nevertheless, Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a strong advocate of free enterprise in the United States, told CNN on Sunday that "some of the things we've been doing, the so-called shock therapy" - quickly moving from a planned to a market economy - "may not be able to work."

He added, "We've put a lot of pressure through the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] on Russia to immediately move to a market economy . . . and, of course, the result has been chaos and a lot of inflation. And there are a lot of experts who think that's precisely the wrong way to go."

Dole reflected the views of other Republicans, including former Rep. Jack Kemp, who has criticized the IMF for imposing painful austerity programs on many nations to prod them toward economic reform in exchange for credit.

Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell of Maine said that Dole had raised a valid question about whether "the pace of reform . . . and Western economic measures urging them to move rapidly . . . caused some instability that has given the anti-reformers some leverage with the populace."

Georgetown's Murray Feshbach, an expert on demography and the social upheaval in Russia, supports eventual market reforms, but he has cataloged what he called the "enormous social problems" that have resulted from the collapse of the Soviet system and the chaotic movement toward reform.

Life expectancy has declined sharply among men. Pensioners, veterans and Russians who have been forced to leave former Soviet satellites but have no place to live are among those who have suffered. In three years, he said, the suicide rate has tripled among the elderly, who fear abject poverty, sickness and homelessness.

Feshbach said that Western aid to the ordinary people of the former Soviet Union has been slow in coming, although Clinton last April pledged a new "people-to-people" program worth more than $4 billion. But much of the aid and loans have been contingent on democratic and market reforms. And Washington had urged Yeltsin to act to break the stalemate between him and leaders of the Parliament, Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov.