THESE days it is hard to believe the ailing, puffy-faced president Boris Yeltsin is the same man who seven years ago stood atop a tank and held off a Communist coup. Indeed, as the rouble goes into a free fall, triggering off a seemingly bottomless economic collapse and visions of hyperinflation, and as political paralysis grips the Kremlin, there is no saying which way Russia is headed—that is, if at all it can be nudged out of the current inertia.