Ex-Soviet states look to Moscow

MOSCOW -- Weeks after a peaceful revolt over election rigging forced a new vote that unseated the Russian-backed government in Ukraine, the leaders of two other former Soviet republics flew to Moscow for consultations.

One, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, has been facing demonstrations in his Central Asian nation against any attempts to falsify parliamentary elections later this month. The other, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, has been accused of fixing elections and dissolved the main opposition party after finding it had sent delegates to study the dissent in Ukraine.

Street protests that led to victories for pro-democracy forces in Ukraine last December and in Georgia a year before could inspire similar revolts in other former Soviet nations, analysts say, and opposition groups across the former Soviet Union have been examining the protests for help in bringing down authoritarian governments in their own nations.

''This is causing a lot of nervousness in the governments," said Moscow-based independent political analyst Alexander Pikayev. ''Many leaders in the former Soviet Union have begun seeking closer ties with Moscow because they have found that they need Moscow's help to stay in power."

Both Akayev and Nazarbayev met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia last month, and indications were they received some support.

''We have been sent to each other by God," Nazarbayev was quoted as saying by Kazinform, Kazakhstan's state-run news agency.

Moscow, however, can hardly boast a record of providing fail-proof help to troubled governments. Putin campaigned widely for Ukraine's then-prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, in a presidential election last fall, but when electoral officials declared him winner, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest vote rigging. Two weeks later Ukraine's Supreme Court ordered a revote, and challenger Viktor Yushchenko won.

Similar uprisings may be brewing in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and western Moldova, where the ruling Communist Party faces an election next month. Taking cues from Georgia's ''Rose Revolution" and Ukraine's ''Orange Revolution," opposition groups picked yellow tulips as a symbol of their resistance in Kyrgyzstan, and grapes in Moldova.

While revolts appear less likely in the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, whose presidents maintain a firm hold on power and tolerate virtually no dissent, the possibility seems to have spurred some apprehension in similarly authoritarian Belarus, a nation bordering Ukraine and new European Union members Poland and Lithuania.

Its president, Alexander Lukashenko, said last month that his critics ''are drawing attention to what happened in Ukraine."

''We shall have no 'rose,' 'orange,' or 'banana' revolutions," he said. ''I want you to remember that."

Lukashenko has rewritten the constitution to let himself serve as president for life, and has been accused of running death squads to eliminate his political opponents -- a charge that the United States supports. But he has been unable to completely block the influence of European democracy.

''Belarus is after all a European country, and a Lukashenko rule in the center of Europe seems strange," Pikayev said.

Moscow sees Belarus as its closest ally on the border with the European Union and NATO countries, and has resisted the West's urging to join its condemnation of Lukashenko's policies.

''We try to engage with the Russians, by working jointly with the European Union to encourage at least coordinated efforts to push the Belarusians toward reform, but have not found Russians very receptive to working with us on this," a senior US diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

When Russians deal with Lukashenko, ''I think there is a feeling -- to use a famous American expression -- that he may be an S.O.B., but he is our S.O.B.," the diplomat said.

With Russia's shrinking international clout, former Soviet republics remain the last outpost of Moscow's influence beyond the Russian borders, said Masha Lipman, a political analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. But Russia risks losing influence to China in Central Asia and the European Union in the West, she said.

''Moscow won't succeed in keeping these countries in its sphere of influence through personal ties and under-the-carpet deals for very long," Lipman said.

The risk of seeing pro-Moscow regimes replaced by more Western-oriented administrations also threatens to undermine the Kremlin's position at home. The defeat of Yanukovych in Ukraine angered some Russians who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union's superpower status and imperial ambitions, and speak fondly of Soviet dictators.

''Stalin was a great man, and Brezhnev was a great man, and it went downhill from there," said a retired Moscow engineer who gave only his first name, Vladimir. ''Putin was wrong to give away Ukraine, and a day will come when Russia will have to shed a lot of blood to retake what it has lost."

Russia's political opposition has largely been suppressed. While widespread street protests by Russian retirees and students against social benefit cuts in recent weeks have refrained so far from major political demands, the Kremlin seems anxious to guard against a replay of the Ukrainian revolt at home.

Boris Gromov, governor of the Moscow region, urged criminal charges against ''those who take advantage of the difficulties of the transition period and organize such rallies," news agencies reported. Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov, who leads a pro-Kremlin political party, suggested lighter ''administrative punishment."