Russia's assault on Chechnya, however ill-conceived from a military point of view, marks a political victory for Boris Yeltsin's security service, the former KGB - a victory with implications that go far beyond this conflict.

The invasion intensifies a trend toward authoritarianism that began with Yeltsin's attack on opponents holed up in the Russian White House in October 1993, a trend that he has fully endorsed with his own decrees.With the Chechens all but defeated and a puppet government sure to be installed, the whole crisis could blow over, leaving Yeltsin with a badly bruised image as a democrat but still in office.

Although the military is conducting the assault in Chechnya, the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the successor to the KGB's Second Directorate, has been masterminding the operation.

As press reports have made clear, the invasion of Chechnya has not been popular with the military. Some generals have voiced outright opposition.

But the counterintelligence chief, Sergei Stepashin, and his colleagues, stationed at Mozdok near the Chechen border, have shown no lack of zeal.

To be sure, they would have preferred to subdue the Chechens by non-military means. In the months leading up to the invasion, Stepashin's counterintelligence service - with help from Russian foreign intelligence operatives - conducted an aggressive campaign to bring down the government of President Dzhokhar Dudayev, supplying Chechen opposition groups with arms and sending in elite forces to carry out covert operations.

But after these efforts failed, the security chiefs pushed for the deployment of Russian troops.

When I asked why the counterintelligence service had abandoned non-military tactics, the official replied that it was not enough just to get rid of President Dudayev and his associates.

Russia was dealing with a vast "criminal mafia" that required an all-out military attack.

His comments echoed a statement his boss Sergei Stepashin had made six months earlier: "I am in favor of the violation of human rights if the person involved is a bandit and criminal."

Clearly, the war has grave implications for individual rights in Russia as a whole. What's to prevent the Yeltsin administration from using similar justifications for persecuting other stubborn ethnic groups or even individual dissenters?

Having spent most of his career in the Interior Ministry - whose troops are supporting the Russian Army in Chechnya - Stepashin was a newcomer with little apparent influence when he joined the security services in 1991.

But he earned his stripes through his unswerving support for Yeltsin during the president's struggles against political opponents and was rewarded with his appointment as head of the counterintelligence service.

There is talk in Moscow of competition between Stepashin and Aleksandr Korzhakov, the president's bodyguard and chief of his personal security service. He worked in the KGB's Ninth Directorate and has been Yeltsin's most intimate confidant in recent years.

The fact that the KGB is no longer a monolith and has been split into several agencies doubtless has created rivalries and led to a lack of cohesion in the security services as a whole. But this is not necessarily a disadvantage for Yeltsin, since he retains direct control over all the agencies of the former KGB.

As in the cases of earlier instances of Russian aggression, such as the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, public outrage over Chechnya has caused the administration to retrench and exhibit signs of xenophobia.

A disturbing indication of such retrenchment - and harbinger of a possible crackdown on democracy - was a Jan. 10 report by the counterintelligence service that was leaked to The Independent Gazette, a Moscow daily.

The report said that while American scholars and students visiting Russia pretend to conduct research, they are actually being paid by the CIA to collect information that subverts the political process. It claimed that American visitors are stealing commercial secrets and luring highly trained professionals to the United States.

Worse still, the report went on, much of the information Americans get comes from the Russian press.

Among the steps recommended to stop this "subversion" was restricting the flow of information to Westerners through the media - that is, restricting freedom of the press - and limiting the ability of Westerners to contact those with knowledge of commercial and state secrets - restricting freedom of movement.

Are these Yeltsin's words? In Moscow, as in Washington, rumors abound that he has lost control and is being manipulated by others: He's dying of an undisclosed disease; he's a hopeless alcoholic; he's being drugged by Aleksandr Korzhakov, his bodyguard.

For those who have a stake in believing that Yeltsin is at heart a democrat and not responsible for Moscow's current policies, such theories have appeal.

They also suit his purposes. If he has any hope of retaining the faith of Western leaders, he has to distance himself from the aggression against Chechnya.

He has chosen to ignore the admonitions of his human rights adviser, Sergei Kovalyov. And his recent statements on Chechnya, together with his dismissal of key generals who opposed his policy, give little indication that he has regrets.

The war serves the Yeltsin administration by giving a message to other non-Russian ethnic groups, including those of the newly independent states, that Moscow will not hesitate to use violence in the face of recalcitrance.

It also provides an excuse for drawing the curtain a bit on what Yeltsin and his advisers from the former KGB apparently see as excessive freedoms.