DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704150509

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY JOHN A. FAHEY 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

RUSSIA AFTER THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

RESURRECTION

The Struggle for a New Russia

DAVID REMNICK

Random House. 398 pp. $25.95.

Former Washington Post reporter David Remnick witnessed the demise of the Soviet empire during his four-year assignment as a Moscow correspondent. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Lenin's Tomb. Continuing his chronicle in Resurrection, Remnick attempts to unravel the chaotic aftermath of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika.

Resurrection could earn the author another Pulitzer.

The book is replete with in-depth interviews with Russian power players. Remnick interviewed multimillionaire Russian businessmen who have milked the Russian economy with corrupt practices that would put 19th-century American robber barons to shame. The most powerful are true-blue Yeltsin oligarchs. The only members of the ``Big Seven'' who do not appear in Resurrection are Vladimir Potanin, head of Uneximbank; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the Menastep financial empire, and Mikhail Friedman of Alpha Bank.

Although Remnick's coverage of Boris Berezovsky, one of the wealthiest of Yeltsin's henchmen, is sketchy, his interviews with the others provide a clear picture of their exploitation of the country's transition from communism to capitalism. His use of first names and patronymics adds a dimension rarely encountered in books on Russian affairs. Among themselves, Russians do not address one another using surnames. It is Boris Nikolayevich - not Yeltsin - and Mikhail Sergeyevich - not Gorbachev.

Using this familiar form of address, Remnick adds a sense of reality and intimacy to the dialogues.

The author devotes many pages to the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a $300 million undertaking to resurrect the original cathedral destroyed by Stalin. Remnick marvels at the generous financial support from the government, Orthodox Church and millionaire businessmen, but he does not mention how such an extravagant expenditure might be welcomed even by poor Moscovites.

The gigantic, heated, open-air Moscow Swimming Pool that replaced the former cathedral led very superstitious Russians to believe that the many drownings in the pool were punishment for the sacrilegious destruction of the first Christ the Savior cathedral. Despite the cost, many Russians would bless themselves in grateful thanks to God for the turnabout.

No city or village is immune from post-Communism chaos. Remnick traveled extensively, finally visiting Gorbachev's native village, Privolnoye. Describing the conditions, he writes, ``The economy had collapsed. The local movie theater had closed down because no one could afford a ticket. The local hospital could no longer afford to feed the patients. . . . Without subsidies from Moscow the local (collective) farm had fallen into a dismal state. . . . People got by, they admitted, by stealing food from the farm.''

Always the quintessential journalist, Remnick recounts in detail the serious problems Yeltsin faces from his own impulsive personality, political enemies and parliamentary intrigue. Foremost among his enemies is his former chief bodyguard, confidant and drinking buddy, KGB General Alexander Korzhakov. Siding with a political faction warring with Korzhakov, Yeltsin fired him.

Korzhakov had threatened repeatedly to release ``incriminating evidence'' against Yeltsin and his aides. Since publication of Resurrection, General Korzhakov has been elected to the lower house of Russian parliament. He now brags that as a parliament member, he cannot be locked up for revealing secrets that would embarrass and damage the Kremlin leadership.

In an extraordinary coup, the author also interviewed the reclusive Alexandr Solzenitsyn and his family. Remnick covers Solzenitsyn's exile in America and his less than triumphant return to Russia.

The author optimistically closes with the words, ``Russia has entered the world, and everything, even freedom, even happiness, is now possible.'' But as the gap continually widens between the ``haves'' and ``have nots,'' Russians are more likely to believe in the wisdom of their proverb, ``In order to be happy, one must believe in happiness.'' MEMO: John A. Fahey is an associate professor emeritus of foreign

languages and literatures at Old Dominion University.

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