The Party on Trial

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

The new tricolor flag of democratic Russia looked as if it had been hastily tacked to the courtroom wall underneath a metal emblem with the Soviet hammer and sickle. The 13 judges, seated at a nearby tribunal, did not appear to be completely comfortable in their new black robes with white linings. Minutes after the hearings opened, the court became embroiled in a free-for-all about how to deal with the fact that former President Mikhail Gorbachev had refused to show up. Show trials have always been a staple of Soviet political discourse, but the proceeding that began in Moscow last week is different. This time the Communist Party is in the dock, as Russians struggle to come to terms with seven decades of history. At issue is whether President Boris Yeltsin acted legally when he banned the party and seized its assets after last year's failed coup attempt. But the political stakes are higher. The trial will consider the high crimes and misdemeanors attributed to the party and perhaps outlaw, once and for all, the kind of totalitarian system it created.

Amid moments of drama and confusion, Russia's Constitutional Court, established only last year, heard the first evidence in a case that was certain to test the mettle of the country's fledgling democracy and establish important legal precedents. The hearings raise issues about Yeltsin's power to rule by decree. They will expose the party's checkered past and pose painful questions about retribution and punishment in future trials. And they could provoke a surge of resentment among the party faithful that could spill into the streets -- and heighten anxieties about another putsch attempt.

Yeltsin won a major victory over hardliners in August 1991, but many democratic supporters fear that the second Russian revolution did not go far enough in suppressing the communist past and hope that the court will close out the chapter. In fact, what happened to the party remains something of a mystery. It controlled almost every aspect of life and counted more than 20 million members in its prime, yet seemed to vanish overnight after the failed coup. A year later, the legacy of communist rule has proved difficult to erase. Democrats may be in control of the tip of the pyramid of power, but the middle levels are still dominated by bureaucrats from the old nomenklatura, who may have taken down their portraits of Lenin but pay only lip service to the new regime. In a show of strength last month, a coalition of hard-line communists and extreme nationalists tried to occupy Moscow's main television studio. Now party members have gone to court to try to repeal Yeltsin's ban.

The plaintiffs argue that Yeltsin overstepped his authority when he dissolved the party by decree and opened the way for a dictatorship in democratic disguise, where no political group will be safe from a presidential ban. They disclaim any responsibility for crimes committed by party leaders in the past and want to limit the scope of the hearings to the period after they renounced their monopoly on power in 1990. They also hope to shift the focus by dwelling on the party's achievements in defeating Nazi Germany and building the Soviet Union into a superpower.

The democrats' defense hinges on the claim that the Communist Party was never just a political party but a totalitarian state structure ruled by an elite who pulled the strings of a puppet parliament, government and judicial system. The case will be based on a trail of paper evidence linking the party leadership to almost every decision of importance -- or unimportance -- made in the Soviet Union. Says presidential lawyer Sergei Shakhrai: "We will show how the Politburo passed laws, not the parliament; how it rendered judicial verdicts, not the Supreme Court; how it managed the economy and launched space flights, not government agencies. It was the Communist Party that created the Soviet Union and also brought about its downfall."

As evidence, the lawyers have submitted 36 volumes of documents from the millions recorded by assiduous empire builders. Only a trickle have so far been leaked to the public, though the Russian government is now setting up guidelines for publication of more. But even these few offer revelations of party crimes and misdeeds on a massive scale: Communist campaigns to destroy the church, starve peasants in forced famines, purge political opponents and resettle entire ethnic groups. The financing of terrorists, who received arms shipments from Soviet warships on the high seas. The personal enrichment of party leaders. The sale of diamonds and gold abroad to buy food and consumer goods for wartorn Afghanistan at a time when there were chronic shortages at home. The squandering of hard currency on more than 70 communist movements around the globe. In one bizarre incident, the party funded training for Italian communists in radio codes and cosmetic surgery -- in case they had to go into hiding.

The evidence is potentially so explosive that the hearings, which could last several weeks, have been compared in impact to the postwar Nuremberg trials of Germany's Nazi leaders. But Yeltsin's men say they have no desire to start a witch-hunt against specific party officials, including Gorbachev. "There are no victors and no vanquished," says Shakhrai. "People should be tried only for criminal actions, not because they were members of the party nomenklatura." Another team lawyer, Andrei Makarov, puts it more succinctly: "We do not want to turn these hearings into a political show."

Nevertheless, the verdict will have enormous importance for the political future of a country that knows little about and has less faith in constitutional rights and legal procedings. The Yeltsin team wants to establish the crucial point that the President was actually defending the constitution when he dissolved the party. Says Makarov: "The court should create a precedent and state clearly that any organizations -- fascist, communist or even superdemocratic -- should be subject to a ban when they try to realize their ideological goals through violence and violation of the law."

Gorbachev has categorically refused to take part in the hearings, claiming that they will only produce "division and discord." Says he: "How can you put 70 years of history on trial?" Even those who blame Gorbachev for the party's ruin share his sentiments. Gennadi Zyuganov, a Russian communist leader who will be testifying against Yeltsin, does not believe that the party can get a fair hearing in a court made up of former communists. He warns that attempts to brand the party a "criminal organization" will be "the penultimate step to complete schism in society" and could push the country toward civil war.

There is some irony in a court made up of former communists ruling on the legalities of a communist-written constitution in a case against the Communist Party. During its brief history, the court has already handed down rulings against Yeltsin. It is entirely possible that this time the judges may render a Solomonic verdict rebuking the Russian President for misusing his powers while upholding the notion that the party is unconstitutional.

Still, members of the Yeltsin legal team remain confident of victory. They argue that if the court rules against the communists, it might prod fence straddlers in the bureaucracy, the police and the army to join in democratic ! change. Says Shakhrai: "If the court finally decides that the history of this organization is over, the President, the parliament and the people of Russia may be able to receive the kind of state power they need."

The trouble is that Russians nowadays are more interested in the price of bread than in settling old scores. As Makarov concedes, "If you can't feed the country, all these discussions amount to nothing. Democracy cannot last long on an empty stomach." In the coming months, Russia's problem-plagued leaders might become so distracted in fending off the challenge from communist rabble-rousers out in the streets protesting the verdict that they might miss a danger nearer at hand: a creeping coup from within the state, as the gray mass of post-communist apparatchiks slowly regain control of the government and military bureaucracy. If supporters of the old regime lose this case, they could still win a victory out of court.