Counterreformation

Debates still rage in Moscow about whether hard-liners might try another coup to restore something like the old communist regime. But the real question is, Why should they bother? Already, conservatives -- in a post-Soviet context, those who resist change in the old Kremlin ways -- have been staging a kind of "creeping coup." They have been worming their way into key positions in President Boris Yeltsin's administration and are beginning to bend policy toward continued, or even increased, state control of the economy. Crows Arkady Volsky, head of the anti-Yeltsin faction: "The policies of the reformist government are on the...