AS POLAND GOES, SO GOES DISUNITED AND DILAPIDATED RUSSIA

The elections in Poland and the turmoil in Russia puncture the notion of a painless conversion from Communism to democracy and the free market.

Poland was considered to be the classic and most hopeful case. With 80 percent of the farm land already in private hands, with its strong Catholic, anti-Communist tradition, with its longstanding desire to be part of the West and escape Russian domination, Poland would be the place where democracy and capitalism would flourish.

Not quite. Last week the principle pro-capitalist political party got only 10.5 percent of the vote. The parties favored by the Catholic Church, Lech Walesa and Solidarity all fared poorly.

The big winners were the two groups led by ex-Communists: the Democratic Left Alliance and the Peasants Party. Together they polled 36 percent of the vote which, under Poland's multi-party system, will translate into two thirds of the seats in Parliament.

What happened?

First, we should ask what didn't happen. The people of Poland did not vote to initiate a new Cold War or to erect a new Iron Curtain. They didn't authorize their politicians to reintroduce either a new Communist dictatorship or a Marxist-Lennist command economy.

They did express their abiding displeasure with the pervasive hardships that accompany an instantaneous conversion to free enterprise. It's easy for the Harvard economists to advise from afar: Get it over with immediately -- full steam ahead -- Don't fret about the wounded along the way. It's another thing to have to live with the short term disruptions that are created in the wake of a "Big Bang."

Despite the fact that Poland has the fastest growing economy in Europe, the gap between the new rich and the old poor has widened. The wounded are the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable and the unskilled of all ages and backgrounds. The wounded walked to the polls and said, "Remember us. To hell with who owns a Mercedes. We want a job. We want to eat."

Lithuanians did the same a year ago and HUngarians may do likewise next spring. It's part of the same problem that Helmut Kohl faces in the old East Germany. But Germany at least has enough wealth to prop up its wounded and ease the pain, if not the disillusionment.

It's part -- an enormous part -- of the pervasive divisions at work in Russia. Much of the new, ostentatious free enterprise wealth being generated out of the anarchy in Moscow is in the hands of bandits, black marketeers and con artists.

The gap between the ostentatious hustlers and the hapless poor continues to widen. More BMWs were sold in Moscow last year than in all of Western Europe put together. Boris Yeltsin's political grip as a free market reformer loosens. More advice from absentee American economic professors may not save him over the long run.

Disunited and dilapidated Russia, with not a scintilla of experience with either capitalism or democracy, may not be able to digest all of freedom's blessings in one swift meal. The Yeltsin move to one-man rule, applauded around the world, proves as much.