HARD-LINE HARDBALL: YELTSIN A PLAYER, CLAIM LOCAL EXPERTS

Boris Yelstin, the reform-minded president of the Russian republic, remains a key player in the Soviet Union's unfolding drama of Communist hard-liners seizing power.

That view was expressed Monday by two Southeast Missouri State University political science professors Russell Renka and Rick Althaus.

Yeltsin has publicly denounced the takeover by Communist hard-liners. The hard-liners, backed by tanks, seized power Sunday night from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Both Renka and Althaus said the military will play a key role in whether the hard-liners are able to consolidate their power.

"If Yeltsin finds himself as a voice crying in the wilderness, up against a unified military and bureaucracy, there is little that can happen," said Althaus, who has made two trips to Moscow in the past three years.

"If the military and bureaucracy are divided, Yeltsin could play a major role," he said.

Renka said: "Yeltsin is a key individual. (The hard-liners) must try to overthrow Yeltsin every bit as much as they must try to overthrow Gorbachev."

He said he expects the military "to try to take physical action directly against Yeltsin."

Both Renka and Althaus said that under Gorbachev the Soviet people enjoyed greater freedom of speech and press.

Said Althaus, "I think history has shown us that it is tough to put the genie of democracy back in the bottle, but it's not impossible if it is done before the genie is all the way out."

Renka said the odds are in favor of the hard-liners, at least for now. The coup, he said, "certainly can succeed; the odds are that it will in the short run.

"They have the existing power structure," he said. "An alternative power structure was on the rise but was not solidly in place."

Gorbachev isn't the first Communist to be overthrown, Renka said. In 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was deposed.

But Renka said that was a type of palace coup. Gorbachev's ouster "was not a palace coup, it was a public coup."

Both Renka and Althaus said the hard-liners must deal with an economy that is in ruins.

Althaus last visited the Soviet Union in January 1990, when he and a political science department graduate assistant participated in a Model United Nations conference at Moscow.

On that visit, Althaus found the Soviet economy in shambles, with stores having few consumer goods to sell.

Althaus said Monday that hard-liners would likely seek to return to a centralized economic system. But he said: "I don't think it would solve their economic crisis; I doubt that there is anything anybody can do in the short run to solve it."

Renka said a return to a centralized economic system will only lead to more economic hardships. "The economy won't get better, it will only get worse."

Renka said if the coup succeeds, the hard-line government will have its hands full trying to manage a country where food is in short supply and there is unrest among the Soviet republics.

Both Renka and Althaus said the hard-line government will be too busy dealing with domestic problems to resurrect the old Cold War with western nations.

Althaus said, "We know that the Baltic republics would like to go their own way and that there is an increasingly strong independence movement in the Ukraine and Georgia." But for the new hard-line government, control of the Russian republic, which includes Moscow, is essential, Althaus said.

"Historically," he pointed out, "the Republic of Russia has been the most powerful, the most influential in the union. I think if the new government can't hold the Russian republic, then it has got nothing."

Althaus and Renka said Yeltsin and other opponents of the new government may call general labor strikes.

"That's one of the few ways that the masses have of expressing their dissatisfaction," said Althaus.

Both professors said the overthrow of Gorbachev could threaten the Middle East peace process. Gorbachev had given his support to President Bush's efforts to bring peace to the Mideast.

"It is a serious setback," said Renka. "It makes everybody much more jittery."