NEWTON'S LAW: THE HUMAN DESIRE FOR LIBERTY BRINGS DANGER FOR THE SOVIETS

They were nice images, no?

There were those joyous folks standing on the Berlin Wall, reveling in an action that would have resulted in authoritarian gunfire a week earlier.

There were those exotic and marvelous words that infiltrated the language ... glasnost and perestroika.

There were Soviet agriculture officials in our backyard, gruff by nature but here and willing to learn American farming methods that we were willing to share.

We were even generous with Western decadence: the image remains clear of Billy Joel and others rocking Soviet audiences, exhibiting spoiled antics when the crowds responded only politely and not rabidly.

Rumors flew that Raisa Gorbachev, the Soviet first lady, carried an American Express Gold Card, there being no bourgeois ~gesture more suited to burgeoning capitalism.

The Soviets were even developing a passion for baseball ... Abner Doubleday meets V.I. Lenin.

It was all very pleasant, the melting away of the Cold War.

Germans were again Germans, no longer distinguished by compass points.

Czechs were suddenly ruled by a playwright instead of a tyrant.

Romanians displayed an untamed brand of reform by trying, convicting and executing their deposed dictator and his wife in the course of a lunch hour. (To my knowledge, Vice President Quayle offered no criticism about there being too many attorneys involved.)

Then, there was Gorbachev. He looked Communist enough but had a demeanor that announced he could be dealt with. Maybe it was the unfortunate birthmark that stirred our sympathies, or the name that shortened neatly Gorby to make him seem less threatening.

Mikky G., for all of his generous, man-of-the-decade press clippings, became something of a Michael Dukakis, clever enough to talk a good game on the road but with a real mess in the works back home. He gave his citizens new freedoms that sent ripples through what had been the Eastern Bloc. What these folks wanted, then, was something to eat. Ungrateful masses.

Thus, Gorbachev on Monday was proclaimed as "ill," which, in the parlance of KGB thuggery, meant that his services as potentate were no longer required.

It was a coup worthy of a Caribbean republic, the sort of mischief that occurs in locales where might has made right over an extended period of time.

Some observations:

In times of oppression and openness, the Soviet Union has been an unproductive mess disguised as a superpower. Why would anyone want to grab the reins of power there?

Gorbachev had built enough global good will to wrest financial aid from a number of democratic nations. American tax dollars would soon have been divvied up in the Kremlin. Bummer, Mr. Yanayev. The bank doors slammed shut Monday.

If Gorbachev was not able to corral the Baltic states with a constitutional mandate, how do these renegade leaders propose to hold the nation together without one?

Questions usually outnumber answers when governments change hands. What remains unequivocal is that voices of freedom are not easily silenced. Who can not find themselves moved by Soviet citizens, shielded from mass communication and acting on instinct, confronting those who would pull their nation away from the path of democracy?

Still, force can temper the will and our memories need not be long to see how that is accomplished. Red Square could turn into Tiananmen II; coup leaders, especially the desperate and aimless ones at work here, are capable of slaughter.

As summer trickles from our grasp and freedom remains firmly within it, American hearts and minds focus not on an individual fallen from power but on a people endangered by the human desire for liberty.