The New Year -- a time for taking stock, for asking brutal questions and giving honest answers. Is democracy gaining strength in Russia? Are economic reforms taking hold here? Are the promises and hopes of August 1991 any closer to realization?


A year ago, Russia was still recovering from the events of October 1993, which -- despite the violence -- seemed to promise an end to divided government. Twelve months later, however, analysts are drawing a straight line from the guns of October, which gave President Boris Yeltsin virtually a free hand to govern by decree in 1994, to the guns of Chechnya, with the looming threat of increased authoritarianism.


After last December's parliamentary elections, the entire world was shocked by the alarming success of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party. Yeltsin, with reformers Yegor Gaidar, Boris Fyodorov, Anatoly Chubais and Alexander Shokhin prominent in his government, seemed then the best hope for holding back resurgent, xenophobic nationalism.


One year later, though, Gaidar, Fyodorov and Shokhin have left the cabinet, and Gaidar's faction has withdrawn its support for Yeltsin over Chechnya. Ominously, there is no reformist figure in sight with the charisma and authority to pick up Yeltsin's fallen mantle. Gaidar admitted as much this week when he said that calling for Yeltsin's impeachment would mean opening the government to the "red-brown" opposition.


The record on economic reform is also decidedly mixed, with many of the gains of the first part of the year undercut by developments in the second. Chubais' voucher privatization program was by far the most successful of Russia's reforms, turning some 40 million Russians into stockholders.


But other vital reforms lag far behind. Taxes are a mess; inter-enterprise debt is dragging down the economy; the stock market remains a wilderness; and attempts to rationalize the labyrinthine oil export system appear to have failed. On top of it all, the 1995 budget -- already a collection of wishes and promises -- is in danger of being sunk by the incalculable expense of destroying, then reconstructing Chechnya.


Perhaps it is too easy to be pessimistic now, with the consequences of Chechnya still unclear. However, it is clear enough that 1994 did little to build confidence that Russia is truly committed to reform and democracy. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin may have summed up the entire year when responding to a specific question about a specific measure: "We were hoping for the best, but it turned out the way it always does."


As 1995 begins, the balance between hope and despair seems dangerously tipped toward the latter.