FORCES OF REFORM IN THE U.S.S.R.

Last week's drama in the Soviet Union amounts to more than a coup that failed, upsetting oil and financial markets and worrying companies that want to conduct business there. The failed coup confirms the primacy of four forces guiding Soviet reform. It thus gives oil companies and markets a clearer view than they had before of the troubled country's future.

The most obvious force is political decentralization. Authoritarians never surrender power; they lose it. The coup attempt came the day before the planned signing of a union treaty that would have devolved much authority from Moscow and the Communist Party to the republics. Coup leaders thought they could preserve something already lost. Decentralization, whether or not it occurs as contemplated in the postponed union treaty, will continue. For non-Soviet companies, that raises hopes that frustrating jurisdictional puzzles will someday be solved.

Another obvious and equally impelling force is economic desperation. Coup leaders seem to have been motivated as much by their justified economic gloom as by their miscalculations regarding authority. Similar economic pessimism 4 years ago encouraged President Mikhail Gorbachev to open Soviet commerce to international capital. More recently, it led him and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin to announce steps to revive the woeful petroleum industry, reverse the oil production slump, and thus restore a vital source of hard currency income.

POINT OF AGREEMENT

Economic desperation at least represents a point of agreement, whatever its dreadful consequences for the Soviet people and potentially incendiary effects on politics. It has subverted Marxist ideology and cast doubt on the ability of any one regime to rule the huge country by brute-and expensive-military force. Last week's coup probably had less to do with resurgent Marxism than with frustration over slow economic progress under Gorbachev. Even if coup leaders had succeeded, there's little reason to think they would have expelled non-Soviet companies for unsupportable ideological reasons.

A third, more welcome force at work in the Soviet Union is democratization. For lack of popular support, the coup fizzled. The Soviet people have sampled democracy and apparently like it. It was the popularly elected Yeltsin who defied the usurpers from atop a tank, congealed opposition to the coup, and, in effect, proxied back to power the unelected and hidden Gorbachev.

These guys are going to have to work something out. If they do, if Gorbachev accurately interprets Yeltsin's and the citizenry's roles in his return to office, the outcomes will include greater decentralization and speedier economic reform-both good for non-Soviet companies. If the experience instead turns Gorbachev to defensive militancy, the outcome might be civil war.

COMPANIES' DETERMINATION

The fourth force shaping Soviet reform is the impressive determination of international companies to ride through chilling events. Companies watched their worst case planning scenario unfold in Moscow and didn't bolt. Their resolve must have emboldened coup opponents. Although surprises remain possible, the rewards that seemed likely late last week were more political stability than existed before, a quicker shift of authority to the republics, and more-rapid integration of international companies into the needy economy.

This wasn't the first political crisis to test the commitment of companies pioneering Soviet business frontiers. It was, however, the most frightening and dangerous. Resolution of each of the past crises has improved the outlook for companies that stood fast. That seems to be the case again.