Soviet Union No Shortage of Rumors

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The crises keep coming, thicker and faster than the first snowflakes of the season that fell on Moscow last week. The bread and cigarette crises of August have not so much disappeared as given way to discussions about fresh shortages of eggs and butter; well-founded fears of forthcoming scarcity in supplies of potatoes, vegetables and fuel; anxious predictions of riots in coming months. The nation's leaders openly allude to a possible breakdown of authority and descent into anarchy.

So it is no wonder that wild rumors fly among Soviet citizens. What is perhaps surprising -- and the surest indicator of growing gloom -- is that the rumors have centered on a coup by the traditionally docile military, and that these rumors tend to grow with every strong denial.

The stories have surfaced in such usually well-informed journals as Moscow News and Literaturnaya Gazeta. The first flock of rumors suggested that a pro- democracy, antigovernment rally in Moscow would serve as the pretext for the coup. The rally came and went with little incident. The rumors bubbled on -- even though conspiracy theorists cannot agree on who is supposed to be plotting against whom. While most talk is of a coup mounted by military conservatives eager to institute a law-and-order regime, Vladimir Petrunya, a commentator for TASS, has charged that it is reformist radicals who want to overthrow the government. Each side accuses the other of deliberately creating shortages to increase the public anxiety and unrest that would be conducive to a coup.

During a parliamentary session last week, Deputy Sergei Byelozertsev declared that units from four divisions and two regiments of paratroops had moved into the Moscow area. "I want an explanation for why they were in uniform, armed with tear gas, bullet-proof clothing and weapons," he said. He also demanded to know why two divisions had been placed under KGB command. KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov called the Deputy's statement "groundless."

Nonetheless, the mass-circulation newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda the next day achieved a bizarre fusion of conservative-radical coup rumors; it said ; military forces had been put on alert in early September to thwart a planned takeover by radicals who had organized armed assault groups. "The facts in this article were invented," Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov protested in Parliament. "No one is is preparing paratroopers for actions against the people." But even that did not kill the conspiracy talk. Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov and members of the Russian Federation government charged that Communist Party provocateurs and military hard-liners were trying to organize phony reformist rallies Oct. 6 and 7, at which they would stage violent incidents that would serve as a pretext for a coup.

Western diplomats think a coup is highly unlikely; the Soviet military has a long tradition of subservience to civilian authority and neither the will nor the unity to break it. But there have in fact been military movements in the Moscow area. Yazov and Kryuchkov have said that many of the troops are helping to bring in the potato harvest, and Western correspondents wandering through potato fields outside Moscow have encountered soldiers who really were digging up spuds. The defense and KGB chiefs, however, also insist that some troops are preparing for the Nov. 7 Revolution Day parade, an assertion that Boris Yeltsin, leader of the Russian Republic, for one, finds hard to swallow.

One theory is that Mikhail Gorbachev wants extra military muscle available in case food riots erupt. If true, that would constitute the most startling indication yet of the President's weakening authority; Gorbachev the reformer would be turning to the largely reform-resistant military to keep him in power.

On the surface, Gorbachev's authority is growing. The parliament last week granted him the power he had requested to impose economic changes by decree, and he promptly issued an order to all government institutions and local authorities to stop hoarding goods and fulfill contracts for delivery. The order, however, looks unenforceable. Meanwhile, new problems keep piling up: a threat of another coal miners' strike and a declaration of economic sovereignty by the Far Eastern region of Yakutia, a part of the Russian Republic. No wonder rumormongering is so popular. Gossipy speculation can be a welcome relief from grim reality.

With reporting by James Carney/Moscow and Sally B. Donnelly/New York