A SUBTLE but significant change of government has occurred in Russia. The dispatch of Russian soldiers and security forces into Chechnya, the breakaway republic, and the protest it has caused among supporters of reform and "democrats," has realigned the political forces in Russia, more so than did the disbanding of the Parliament in October 1993. Authoritarian rule may be gaining momentum.
However distasteful many democrats might have found President Boris N. Yeltsin's decision to shell the Parliament building more than a year ago, they by and large closed ranks behind him. Indeed, the confrontation between Mr. Yeltsin and the retrograde Parliament was the basis for a renewal of the alliance between him and the Western-oriented intellectuals who entered Russia's political fray in the days of "perestroika."
It was this alliance that helped bring Mr. Yeltsin to power as the first president of Russia in June 1991. And it was this alliance that gave full meaning to Mr. Yeltsin's fledgling presidency during the failed coup in August 1991.
But this political marriage has been irreparably damaged by Mr. Yelstin's Chechen adventure. "The party of war has won," declared Nikolai N. Vorontsov, a prominent member of Russia's Choice, the main reformist party, and one of the few with a deep understanding of the Northern Caucasus region, where Chechnya is located.
Mr. Vorontsov's expression hearkened back to the years of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, when the "party of war" referred to those lTC who advocated the use of brute force against republics wishing to secede from the Soviet Union. Those "party" actions -- like the assault on the television studios in Vilnius, Lithuania, in December 1991 -- made Mr. Gorbachev the hostage of authoritarian forces.
A similar drama now is unfolding around Mr. Yeltsin. The only difference between his situation and Mr. Gorbachev's is that the latter never relied politically on the "democrats."
The sense of bitterness and betrayal felt by democrats is almost palpable. It could be heard, for example, in former prime minister Yegor T. Gaidar's frustration in failing to reach Mr. Yeltsin in order to talk him out of the Chechen invasion. Mr. Gaidar's bitterness was especially poignant, since he was one of the few to stand by Mr. Yeltsin in October 1993, when everybody in the government, including the security forces and the army, appeared to have deserted the president.
Bitterness, mixed with restrained satisfaction, also could be heard in liberal economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky's "I told you so," which recalled his year-old warning that by endorsing the "lesser evil" of the constitution, the democrats were inviting the greater evil of a presidency run amok.
Mr. Yeltsin, no doubt, must feel equally bitter about being abandoned by the democrats. To him, their stinging criticisms, coming as they do at his moment of crisis, are proof positive that they are ill-suited to become the stewards of the Russian state.
Whether the occupation of Chechnya is calculated to lend legitimacy to what may be a coming shift toward greater authoritarian rule; whether it was a trap laid by anti-democratic functionaries around Mr. Yeltsin to alienate the president's democratic supporters, or whether it was merely an impulsive decision made by a man known for his "decisiveness" -- all are beside the point. Whatever the case, the outcome is bound to be the same: a presidency held hostage to what the Russians call the "power ministries" -- defense, the federal counterintelligence service and, recently, the Main Administration for Protection of the Russian Federation, the rough equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service.
Much the same can be said of Mr. Yeltsin's possible successor, if the presidential elections, scheduled for 1996, are held. The present lineup of the more electable candidates offers a glimpse of this future leader: He looks a little like the U.S. labor leader Jimmy Hoffa -- earthy, clever, pragmatic, very, very strong -- or, more exactly, like a sturdy and head-strong merchant, a "khoziain," out of a play by the 19th-century Russian playwright Nikolai Ostrovsky. Their time has come.
Gregory Freidin, chairman of the Slavic department at Stanford University, is co-author of "Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August, 1991 Coup."