Prepare to Deal With the Voters’ Choice : *Russia: A popular ex-general who champions social order may ride Sunday’s vote into the presidential contest.

Alexander Lebed is a man virtually unknown to Americans, yet he merits our serious attention, for if current forecasts hold true, he could become Russia’s next president.

His meteoric rise in just the past year and his prospect for a big win in Sunday’s parliamentary elections indicate that the 45-year-old former army general commands enough of a following that he might displace Boris Yeltsin. We do not want to find ourselves in the wake of Russia’s presidential election, scheduled for next June, having clung too long to Yeltsin as we did four years ago to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, even as the Soviet Union was coming apart before our eyes.

The tendency in Western media coverage has been to portray Lebed superficially as a would-be Napoleon. But this image has been informed more by anecdotes and sound bites than by searching analysis of what he actually has had to say or who he really is. This is scarcely surprising, given his gift for colorful expression on virtually any topic of concern in Russia today. But he is far more than the rough-riding Hussar that a superficial scan of his pithy one-liners would suggest.

To begin with, although he is far from having the stature of a soldier-statesman like Colin Powell, Lebed is no lunatic chauvinist of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ilk. Nor is he an ideologue eager to exploit popular unrest for an opportunity to turn the clock back, reestablish totalitarian rule and recommit Russia to a competition for global hegemony. A bona fide military professional, he is far removed from what Nikita Khrushchev once dismissed as “those thick-headed types you find wearing uniforms.�

Assuming his ambitions and political prospects are real, what does Lebed mean for Russia? And what does he mean for the West?

Lebed has shown little sign that he is fundamentally antireform. Nor is there proof yet that he is anti-West in principle. True, he has voiced uncompromising opposition to the idea of NATO expansion. But that view is shared by everyone in Russia. At his core, Lebed is a champion of social order. His constant harping against organized crime and government corruption have made him almost a prototypical answer to the prayers of the disenfranchised man on the street, whose most pained cry of late has been for vlast i distsiplina (“power and discipline�) to check the gathering forces of decadence and disarray in Russia.

The least we can do in the interest of an informed and properly responsive U.S. policy is to begin understanding Lebed more fully for what he truly represents, and even to open up a quiet channel with him before it becomes transparently opportunistic and too late. For that matter, it would make sense to do likewise with the other serious “nonmainstream� contenders for Yeltsin’s job, like Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.

Recognizing Lebed’s potential scarcely obliges the U.S. to act as though his rise to national leadership is a foregone conclusion. It does, though, challenge us to be thinking carefully--now--about how we might react should we find ourselves next June facing Lebed as Yeltsin’s successor.

Such an outcome need not be prejudged a disaster for the West. It could even have positive results were Western leaders able to take it in stride and handle it calmly. After all, it would reflect the voice of the Russian people, for better or worse. We would have to honor it as the legitimate outcome of a democratic process, however flawed.

Moreover, Lebed’s election could scarcely be much worse for Russia than today’s bleak reality of a badly impaired Yeltsin presidency that has exhausted its credibility at home and seeks mainly to stay in power at any cost. With such leadership in Moscow, the U.S. has little on which to base much hope for further progress toward Russian domestic reform, let alone for a serious cooperative relationship with the West.

With Lebed, we would face a tabula rasa. What shape might Russian-American relations assume in such a situation? Despite Lebed’s bluster over the specter of NATO expansion and his distaste for what he regards as base American values, he has shown little evidence of an ingrained animus toward the West that would predispose him toward confrontational conduct. Depending on how we approached him, we could find in him either an antagonist or a businesslike, if difficult, work mate in security affairs.

The most crucial unknown is how he would handle the touchy question of Russian minorities living in the former Soviet republics. Other areas where Lebed could prove prickly might include the business of arms sales to pariah states and the chance that he might turn to reactionary policies at home. None of this, however, is fore- ordained. Should a Lebed government be Russia’s fate, we will have little to lose by reaching out to seek his cooperation in a mature relationship shorn of romantic expectations. But if we write him off beforehand as a man on horseback who threatens all that we have hoped for in Russian reform, we could contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy and live to regret it.