You might not guess it from the television coverage, but there is no war going on in Chechnya.


The bazaar in Grozny is buzzing with trade; the potholed streets are full of traffic; you can have an ice-cream in one of several outdoor cafes. There is a 10 P.M. curfew but no one seems to observe it properly.


I traveled out recently to see Ruslan Labazanov, the 27-year-old gunman who has sworn blood revenge on Dzhokhar Dudayev, and then to the Provisional Council's headquarters in the parched plains north of Grozny -- not a single policeman or roadblock stopped me.


If terrible things are going on, then the Chechen republic is becalmed in the eye of the proverbial storm.


So why all the alarm, the Russian troops on alert, the dire warnings, the suspension of passenger flights?


It is not as though the ruthless byzantine regime of Dzhokhar Dudayev is being much more ruthless or byzantine than usual.


True, it looks as though Dudayev's men committed an atrocity in June when they decapitated three of their enemies. But the trio appear to have been members of Labazanov's band, equally as bloodthirsty as Dudayev's men.


The time when Russia really had a chance to tip the scales was last summer when the opposition was camped out in the city center waiting to deal Dudayev a mortal blow. But the moment passed and Dudayev won back the advantage.


Now, suddenly, it seems that Moscow wants something to happen. What has changed?


Part of the answer must be sheer frustration. How can the men in the Kremlin tolerate a separatist enclave thumbing its nose at them almost three years on? They must also be tired of the Chechen-inspired hijackings in Mineralniye Vody, across the border in Russia.


But that in itself is not enough. The more important reason is that Russia has found its man.


Umar Avturkhanov appears decent. Where most of the cast in the Chechen political drama seem to be out of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, he is the straight guy, almost bland by comparison. The words "holy war" and "blood feud" do not drop from his lips.


Avturkhanov has several assets from Moscow's point of view. He has a local power base in the Nadterechny region. He has a sensible strategy, offering Chechens their unpaid salaries and pensions. And he is promising to return Chechnya to the Russian Federation.


Most attractively, he is not Ruslan Khasbulatov, speaker of Russia's now defunct Supreme Soviet.


The nightmare scenario of a legally elected Khasbulatov appearing as the leader of a Russian republic on his southern flank must have given President Boris Yeltsin a few sleepless nights.


Moscow's grand plan seems modeled on Azerbaijan, where the humble colonel they backed went all the way, finally toppled the irksome nationalist president, Abulfaz Elchibey, and made room for a friendlier leader.


But Moscow's scenario this time looks doomed to failure because it has badly misjudged the way things look inside Chechnya.


Dudayev does not give the impression of being a balanced man. As the nattily dressed president gets going with his conspiracy theories -- a Caucasian war, a nuclear bomb over Chechnya, a new Afghanistan -- there seems to be a sort of nuclear glow underneath the skin.


But by now Dudayev looks almost sane. The evidence that Russia wants to get rid of him is topping every nightly bulletin on Ostankino, beamed directly into Chechnya. And the loser is only Avturkhanov, who looks more and more like Russia's poodle.


The Chechens have no state in the conventional sense, but they do have a strong sense of nationhood, built on 200 years of cleaving together and resisting the Russians. That is why Moscow probably knows military intervention is not an option -- its tanks would reach Grozny over piles of Chechen corpses.


Dudayev's role for many Chechens has become that of a gamekeeper -- he is the man who keeps the Russians out and lets Chechens get on with their own business -- and business is the key word.


If Dudayev disappeared tomorrow a lot of Chechens would be relieved. He is too fanatical, even by the rarefied standards of the Caucasus. But they would want a leader in his place who could sustain the enormous pride they feel at defying mighty Russia and in staying outside the bear's embrace -- a role that Avturkhanov seems unlikely to play. Perhaps Khasbulatov's hour is coming after all.