By Nikolaj Khramov

No one doubts any longer that there's a sharp turn to the right in the USSR. The developments of the past few weeks culminating in Edward Shevardnadze's resignation at the fourth congress of the People's Deputies of the USSR where he stated that he wanted no part in the establishment of a dictatorship, convinced even the most incurable of the optimists and the ecstatic admirers of the triumphant Noble prize winner that Gorbachev is no longer trying to sit on two chairs. Pretty fast he is moving his base onto the right chair, vacating the left one which the servants worn out with waiting are ready to fetch and put at long last where it belongs.

It is significant that it is not Valeria Novodvorskaya nor even the co-chairman of the "Democratic Russia" Yuriy Afanasyev who are warning loud and clear about the impending dictatorship, but the number two man of the state, creator of the Soviet foreign policy, who managed to win the hard currency benevolence of the West.

Commanders of "black berets" - the special purpose detachment of the Ministry of Interior of the USSR that occupied several days ago the Riga Publishing house, tell journalists that they "are ready to carry out any order by the President... in order to bring back law and order and establish Soviet power in Riga... We will disband the current authority, take under guard strategic objects and put the nationalists on trial". A series of explosions on the eve of the New Year in the capital of Latvia, which very few people have doubts as to who stood behind them were obviously intended to accelerate the issuance of such order.

And now the last minute news from Lithuania: tanks in the streets, paratroopers seize the radio, television, newspapers, the Lithuanian Parliament is encircled by Soviet troops, dead and scores of wounded in Vilnius...

Overnight Moscow reverses from negotiations with Lithuania and the other two Baltic countries to a direct confrontation and now not even economic, but military pressure.

There are many pointers to the fact that now in the cooking is not just an antigovernment or (anti-Gorbachev) coup in the USSR inspired by the puppets in colonels' uniform at the Congress of People's Deputies or even their boss from the white building in Arbat Square. The military-industrial complex, generals, the Communist Party apparatus - they are all where they used to be - at the helm of the state. Being prepared - or rather under way now - is not a coup, but a 180 degree turn around and in the highest echelons at that.

One of the proofs is the new policy of anti-glasnost reflected in the appointment of Leonid Kravchenko as chairman of the Gosteleradio ( state television and radio company) who immediately banned from the air a perestroika veteran - the "Vzglyad"("Viewpoint") program that undertook to comment on Shevardnadze's resignation, and who on January 11 announced the closure of the "Interfax" information agency that dared objectively cover developments in the Baltic republics.

It should be borne in mind that all this is taking place against the merciless count-down of days and hours towards the deadline of the UN ultimatum to Iraq. Most probably Harry Kasparov will turn out to be right in warning that "the bomb blasts in the Persian Gulf will drown the clanking of caterpillars in the streets of Vilnius, Tbilisi and maybe Moscow". We might recollect that the Hungarian revolution of 1956 was also suppressed to the accompaniment of the Suez crises... And though Bush is warning Gorbachev against using force in the Baltic republics, one shouldn't cherish vain hopes about the governments of "real democracy" who have more than once traded freedom and democracy in various parts of the world - from Munich to Tiananmeng Square - for momentary profits of "real politics". Another thing is by far more important: how will the people of these countries take what is happening now in the USSR? Will voters let their governments restrict themselves to declarations in case the "Chinese syndrome" agg

ravates in the Soviet Union, or will Gorbachev and his new team have to face a negative response of the West in more material terms? It will be the duty of the people who are packing now thousands of parcels for the USSR citizens, to oppose in a most resolute manner any credits, any help to the Soviet government, any states guarantees to private investments in the Soviet economy in case the democratization process in the USSR is irrevocably reversed.

And we, what shall we living in this country do? Shall we praise the "iron fist" that promised us to hurl a piece of sausage onto a clean and empty counter? Or shall we take to the streets, the way we did in February and June of this year, shall we stop our work, refuse to serve in the army of the regime - use all the means of organized non-violent resistance, rather than let dictatorship prevail.

The situation in the USSR is indeed very grave. Perhaps graver by far than it seems to us, radicals who are already planning the next congress of the Transnational Party to take place in Moscow. How resolutely shall we condemn the military actions in the Baltic republics, the "covert" shift to military dictatorship and, perhaps, even fascism? On it depends whether we shall have to hold the 36th congress of the Radical Party (or at least the general meeting of the Soviet radicals), facing together with honorable guests and representatives of other democratic forces the machine gun muzzles in the Luzhniki Moscow Central Stadium.

...It's rather windy in the streets of Moscow now. But the winds blowing now are quite different from those we had a month or two ago. In Pushkin Square they are spreading the slogans of the "Pamyat"(Memory) demonstration that has been held freely for many days running now:" Oust perestroishchiks from Russian soil!"."It is raining in Santiago" this radio message served as a signal to move for General Pinochet's putchists. I'm looking through the window of my Moscow flat - it's January, but it's raining. Who knows, won't the weather forecast for tonight echo as the Chilean September of 1973?