WALKING up the Novy Arbat to the White House of the Russian parliament

I passed the spot where the three young demonstrators were killed during

the Moscow coup. A small, pink marble stone stands on the bridge over

the ring-road. Its inscription reads: ''To the heroes of August 21,

1991''. For months after the deaths and before the little monument was

erected, the bridge was strewn with flowers: huge wreaths from political

organisations, small bouquets, in odd numbers for the dead, placed by

individual citizens.

In those days President Yeltsin and Vice-President Rutskoy stood side

by side in defiance of the ''State Emergency Committee'' which had

usurped power from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The president

dramatically climbed on to a defecting tank to address the people, the

vice-president stood in the lobby of the White House, revolver in hand,

urging the defence of democracy which at that time was synonymous with

the Russian parliament.

Yesterday the little monument over the ring-road boasted a single

bunch of flowers, so withered as to be unidentifiable, the headquarters

of the parliament, now branded as pro-communist, was ringed with the red

flags of the communists and the black, yellow and white banners of the

nationalist movement, Nashi which translates as ''Ourselves'', or,

ironically, ''Sinn Fein''.

The posters read ''Down with Dictator Yeltsin'', and ''Deputies Yes,

Yeltsin No''. A solitary icon of Christ Pantocrator floated above the

political masses.

At the Moscow City Council building on Tverskaya, the former Gorky

Street, the Yeltsin supporters carried banners denouncing the State

Emergency Committee of Rutskoy. President Yeltsin, having made his

dramatic move to introduce ''special rule'' and hold a ''vote of

confidence in the president and vice-president'', was quickly given a

vote of ''no confidence'' by the vice-president.

Mr Rutskoy went on TV at midnight with the Constitutional Court

chairman Valeriy Zorkin, the parliament's deputy chairman Mr Yuri

Voronin and the procurator-general Mr Valentin Stepankov. Their message

was that the president had acted unconstitutionally.

So, in the space of less than two years, politicians who stood

together in the face of an coup d'etat have become resolutely opposed to

each other.

The process has been a gradual one and can be put down to a number of

factors, ranging from the plight of the people under the merciless shock

therapy of Mr Yegor Gaidar to personal political ambitions, notably

those of parliamentary chairman Mr Ruslan Khasbulatov, but to some

extent those of Mr Rutskoy and some of the younger radical reformers in

Mr Yeltsin's cabinet.

The inexorable collapse of the Russian economy, the fall of the rouble

from 30 to 700 to the $1, 2400% inflation and price rises which have

averaged three times the increase in wages, have created a vast pool of

dissatisfaction among ordinary Russian citizens.

In a country raised on agitation it is not surprising that this

dissatisfaction has been exploited. Hard-line communist Colonel Viktor

Alksnis of the National Salvation Front put it succinctly: ''They (the

democrats) won't get people on to the streets to support the

impoverishment of the people. We will get them on to the streets to

oppose it.''

More constitutional politicians have seen their chance too. Mr

Khasbulatov, whose chances of gaining power by democratic means are nil,

has used the remnants of the Soviet system to empower himself beyond his

wildest dreams.

Mr Rutskoy, who has real personal popularity, particularly in the

armed forces, has adopted a strong line against shock therapy for some

time now and has, to some extent, enhanced his standing with the people.

His strongly pro-Russian stance in ethnic disputes on the periphery of

the Russian federation has done him no harm either.

The ''irreconcilable opposition'' of old-style communists and the

newly emergent nationalists has grown too, but to describe the

parliament as a hot-bed of ''red-brown'' or pro-communist forces, is an

over-simplification of the situation.

The current crisis, and it will undoubtedly not be the last one, stems

from more than a year of hardship and political inertia leading to an

erosion of the president's power at the December congress of people's

deputies, due mainly to the amateurish approach of the Yeltsin camp.

This led to a totally adversarial congress this month with the

centrist forces of the Civic Union group finally breaking with Mr

Yeltsin.

The collapse in Civic Union's support has come as a result of the

hints from the Yeltsin camp before the congress began that military

involvement in politics might be necessary in order to push through

reforms.

A letter from Chancellor Kohl of Germany to Western leaders, leaked at

the start of congress, asking if they would support Mr Yeltsin if he

took on emergency powers incensed Civic Union leader Arkady Volsky who

described it as an ''insult to Russia''. But since then Mr Volsky has

come out in favour of what he described as ''liberal economic reforms

supported by a strong executive'', adding that ''you cannot build

democracy in a hungry country''.

This point of view is one that is being heard consistently since Mr

Yeltsin's move towards special powers. It is understandable, coming from

those who want to break the deadlock in power and get on with the

business of economic and political reform. But moves away from

democracy, ''for the sake of democracy'', have gone badly wrong in other

countries and this could happen in Russia too.

* Seamus Martin is Moscow correspondent for the Irish Times.