THE Washington correspondent of the influential evening newspaper

Izvestia, Mr Alexander Shalnev, sounded an alarm bell in the paper's

weekend edition when he stated: ''The CIA does not have a clear picture

of what is going on in Russia.''

The logical conclusion is those of us whose resources are minuscule in

comparison to those of the Central Intelligence Agency have an even

smaller chance of finding out what is really happening.

But large amounts of money, spies in the sky, and operatives on the

ground are not everything and the thought has occurred to this

correspondent that perhaps the CIA's problem has something to do with

semantics.

My own rule of thumb when trying to understand what is happening is to

turn the language upside-down and in a great many cases this works. If a

person or a party in the West, for example, comes out in favour of state

health services, social protection, equal opportunities in education,

and other policies of that nature, it is deemed to be on the left of

centre. In Russian political terminology it would be ''right wing'' or

more commonly ''conservative''.

Conversely in Britain, for example, a person advocating totally

monetarist economic policies, the privatisation of everything that

moves, and the dominance of the market, would naturally belong on the

right wing of the Conservative Party. In Russia he or she would be

classed as a ''radical''. Similarly the Russian Liberal-Democratic Party

led by Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky is ''liberal'' to the extent that it

wants to annexe Finland and ''democratic'' in that it has sent a number

of its less genial members to Iraq to protect Mr Saddam Hussein from the

ravages of ''American imperialism''.

We had a similar example of Russian political semantics this weekend

when a ''round-table'' conference took place in Moscow under the

auspices not only of Parliament but also of the Government with which it

is at loggerheads.

Politicians of varying hues attended, including the parliamentary

speaker, Mr Ruslan Khasbulatov, Vice-president Alexander Rutskoy, and Mr

Yeltsin's new Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin.

At the opening of the conference the powerful Mr Khasbulatov said that

''only through a real consensus among all political and social forces

and the safeguarding of the democratic standards which the country has

attained, can it be lifted out of crisis''.

Our friends in the Central Intelligence Agency may have interpreted

this as meaning that only through a real consensus among all political

and social forces and the safeguarding of democratic standards could

Russia be lifted out of crisis. If they did, they were wrong.

What Mr Khasbulatov was really saying was that a referendum on whether

the country should be run by the President or the Parliament, fixed for

April 11 as part of a deal between himself and Mr Yeltsin, should not

now take place. He admitted as much later in the day at a reception for

the visiting Canadian Foreign Minister, Ms Barbara Macdougal.

Later still he made a contribution to ''consensus and reconciliation''

when he told another visiting Western politician, the Swedish Prime

Minister, Mr Karl Bildt, that Mr Yeltsin was ''not able to cope with his

job and should be relieved of his surveillance of the Government''. In

reply Mr Yeltsin's press secretary, Mr Vyacheslav Kostikov, also in

''conciliatory'' and ''consensual'' mood, said that Mr Khasbulatov had

shown ''a dangerous disposition for base political intrigues'' adding,

in the same spirit of ''consensus'', that: ''Ruslan Khasbulatov's

underhand attack on the head of the executive branch and his arrogant

statement that 'Parliament is the sole stabilising power' clearly reveal

the duplicity of this politician.''

The proposed referendum would, of course, take the matter out of the

hands of the politicians and into those of the people. But in this

respect the messages coming to us from the Russian people via the

opinion polls are every bit as confusing.

The National Opinion Centre in a poll of 1200 urban Russians published

on Saturday showed an absolute majority in favour of having a referendum

to decide who should run the country.

But when asked how they would respond if matters were to be decided by

a referendum, 32% said they would react by refusing to vote because the

question would be too confrontational.

Of those who said they would vote, 32% said they would vote for the

President and 26% for the Parliament. The presidential majority is well

within the margin of error of such a limited poll and in any event it

shows that if a referendum were to be held now, neither side would get

the necessary 50% of the electorate.

Such a result would throw the country into even further chaos.

Attempts to convene a Special Congress of Peoples' Deputies to have the

referendum dropped is likely to have similar consequences.

In the meantime there appears to be only one way to keep Russia on the

rails and that is undoubtedly an attitude of ''consensus and

reconciliation'' in the sense, of course, that these words are

understood in the West.

* Seamus Martin is Moscow Correspondent for the Irish Times.