When President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree last Friday implementing the second-stage privatization program that the State Duma had rejected only a day earlier, he overrode the constitutionally expressed wishes of Russia's democratically elected parliament. That fact should make nobody happy.


But it is an equally unhappy fact that the Duma, through its general legislative delinquency, has left the president with little choice. Either he issues the laws needed to breathe life into Russia's economy by decree, or waits for an irresponsible parliament to act and allows the country to drift aimlessly.


Which is the lesser evil?


Yeltsin, clearly has found it in his interests to choose the authoritarian, rather than the legally more virtuous road. This year he has issued at least 20 decrees on economic policy alone, of which the one launching the government's critical post-voucher-privatization program Friday was merely the latest. These laws, or something close to them, should all have been passed by the parliament.


The Duma, meanwhile, has spent the last six months in free-for-all debates, factional fighting and attention seeking, while producing only 10 new laws -- none of which were fundamental.


Left to its own devices, there is every indication that the Duma would stagnate, leaving the country without even the illusion of a direction. The consequences for a nation poised on the brink of radical economic transformation are not attractive.


Under these circumstances it is understandable that Yeltsin decided to bypass the Duma on Friday. But this is not democracy. Rule by decree flirts with dictatorship however benevolent the intentions.


There is no immediate or honorable way out of this dilemma. But that does not mean that democracy and Russia are incompatible. The challenge is to make new democratic institutions -- such as the State Duma and the still unconvened Constitutional Court -- to work properly.


At the Duma's closing session Friday, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov remarked on the parliament's lack of power. "The Duma is a small stone in the path of presidential self-rule," he said, to general amusement.


Zyuganov has a point. But he would have done well to listen at the weekend to Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the reformist Yabloko faction in parliament, who likened the Duma to "a small child in diapers, replete with all that diapers contain."


Yavlinsky's comments are insulting, but the Duma should take them to heart. Until the deputies begin to behave as an adult legislature, fully aware of their responsibility to the electorate, they are likely to be treated as children -- humored but not respected.