Creatures That Slither and Froth

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

MEMOIRS by Andrei Gromyko; Doubleday; 414 pages; $24.95

AGAINST THE GRAIN by Boris Yeltsin; Summit; 263 pages; $19.95

Centuries from now, when anthropologists are examining the Gorbachev era, they will be astounded by the abrupt changes in the forms of political life that occurred during the punctuated evolution of the period. Mute and spineless holdovers from pre-glasnost days slithered into obscurity and were replaced by frothing creatures distinguished by wide-open mouths and fists thrust upward. Two new autobiographies, published this month in vivid counterpoint, provide a revealing glimpse of this great Soviet transition.

One of the purest specimens of the spongelike species that plunged into extinction is Andrei Gromyko, the perennial Foreign Minister who worked with every Soviet leader from Stalin to Gorbachev and conveniently died last year as he fell from grace. Revealingly, his book is relentlessly unrevealing. Of the dermatologist's nightmare that was Stalin's pockmarked face, Gromyko writes, "I don't recall ever seeing any" scars.

A handful of Gromyko's tales are worth the trudge. For example, he recounts Che Guevara's story of how he became head of the National Bank of Cuba in 1959. Fidel Castro asked the assembled leaders of his revolution, "Tell me, friends, which of you is an economist?" "Che paused. 'I thought he had said, "Which of you is a communist?," so straightaway I said, "I am," at which he said, "OK, you handle the economy." ' "

But such bright spots mainly show how good Gromyko's book might have been had he not chosen to keep his tail between his legs. Memoirs is too often a turgid history cum travelog speckled with diplomatic slavishness. "Staff at the Foreign Ministry did not discuss the purge trials," he says of the Stalinist era. "As diplomats, we avoided the subject." As a result, his book is destined for the dustheap of famous-people-I-have-met books.

In starkest contrast is the hurriedly published autobiography of Boris Yeltsin, the charismatic populist who seems more of a cross between Mick Jagger and Huey Long than a veteran apparatchik. His book, as predictably frank as Gromyko's is dour, bounces from biographical anecdotes to a diary of % his successful 1989 election campaign for the new Soviet legislature. The former volleyball star, who despite touches of buffoonery has become a cult hero among Soviet rebels with a cause, struts his arrogance from the schoolyard to Red Square.

Yeltsin slams the Council of Ministers as "a disorganized, confused gathering of dunderheads," rips into the elderly Gromyko as "of no use to anyone" -- and even pounces on Gorbachev because he "never acts decisively." Yeltsin also suggests that dissidents be paid a salary to combat "our mindless unanimity."

Even more important than what Gromyko and Yeltsin say is the manner in which they do (or do not) say it. Like the old Soviet state of which he was a symbol, Gromyko is plodding and closed and oppressive. Like the new Soviet state of which he ardently hopes to become a symbol, Yeltsin is explosive and open and at times verging on being out of control. Which makes Yeltsin's book, like the new Soviet state, far more exciting than the old model.