IT'S too bad devoted Communists have no room for religion, because Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of his party are in desperate need of a miracle. Nothing short of Saint Nicholas on his sleigh could possibly deliver a cure for the slew of ailments afflicting their country.

From Kremlin bigwigs to local apparatchiki, Soviet leaders are now conceding what Western experts like Hedrick Smith--Moscow correspondent for the New York Times from 1971 to 1974--have known for decades: Lenin's experiment is a bust.

The evidence is everywhere. If Marx's socio-economic dream was supposed to erase nationalism, then why are Lithuanians so intent on preserving their national tongue and culture from Russian encroachment? Why are the Armenians and Azerbaijanis slaughtering one another (with stolen Soviet military paraphernalia) over an Armenian-populated strip of land in Azerbaijan territory? Why are Central Asian republics like Uzbekistan, traditionally a politically docile state, now clamoring for more regional autonomy?

The sheen of utopian rhetoric is thin indeed. The very state that has laid claim to erasing religious tensions has, for the last half century, promoted anti-Semitism through vigorous campaigns against "cosmopolitanism," a euphemism for Jewish influence. The ultra-nationalist group Pamyat ("memory") and lesser known groups have recently taken the lead from the government in stirring up such antagonisms.

If this were the extent of Mikhail Gorbachev's problems, he'd be a man in deep trouble. But they are only the surface.

Labor strikes in the coal-producing regions and elsewhere have contributed their share in crippling the national economy, already weakened by inflation. The irony of these strikes, of course, is that the workers shouldn't need to strike in a state where they are by law their own bosses. With this in mind, Lenin outlawed strikes during the civil war following the October Revolution.

Universal health care, one of socialism's main selling points, is a complete flop. "Health care" in the Soviet Union means rat-infested hospitals, minimal service and, in some places, no running water. Anything better requires a generous and well-placed bribe.

An acquaintance of mine who recently returned from the Soviet Union brought his own clean syringes along, just in case. Soviet hospitals tend to use them over and over.

So much for utopia. So much for Marx. And so much for Lenin.

For Smith, a hardened veteran of Soviet life, such problems are old hat. After returning to the U.S. from three years in Moscow, he authored The Russians in 1974, an exceptionally readable patchwork of anecdotes, interviews and personal experiences of the grey life under Brezhnev.

Life for ordinary Soviets has arguably gotten worse in the 16 years since Smith left, but his new offering is less about the vagaries of life under the nonsensical and stifling regime than a primer on recent changes and their effects on everyday Russians.

The New Russians is part of a genre of hastily published accounts--like Harrison Salisbury's book on the Tiananmen massacre and more recent offerings on the fall of the Berlin wall--which try to appear timely while generalizing enough to keep themselves on bookstore shelves for more than a few weeks.

Smith is certainly timely--his source list includes several interviews in early August of this year. But The New Russians is far from the timeless classic of his first book.

It's hardly the author's fault. It was much easier to write about life under Brezhnev without worrying about becoming dated, since virtually nothing ever changed under the dull, hairy Soviet leader. Writing The Russians was akin to painting with a skyscraper as a subject. Speed was not essential; the skyscraper wasn't going anywhere.

But writing The New Russians was more like using a tumbleweed as a model--Smith had to look hard and write fast, because by the time he was finished, his subject was five miles away and looked completely different.