August 25, 1991

Mikhail S. Gorbachev's final turn against the Communist Party received repeated approval tonight from residents of the capital, who said they had long ago tired of the party yoke. "All our lives, all our reality, has led to this moment," said one Muscovite, who stood stunned at first, then almost serene as he adjusted to the news on a moonlit night.

WELLING up so swiftly that it caught many Long Island residents by surprise, Hurricane Bob tore across the East End of Long Island on Monday and brought gusts of wind over 100 miles an hour to areas as far west as Port Jefferson. For a region well aware of its location squarely in the middle of the East Coast hurricane alley, it was the seventh major hurricane to strike since the destructive storm of 1938, and a reminder of how abruptly a hurricane can arrive, and how swiftly it can alter lives and landscapes.

FEW sensations can compare with the ecstasy of resistance. Anyone who has faced a wall of policemen at midnight or stood vigil at a barricade of toppled buses when rumors spread that the tanks are rolling has known the rare elation of righteous rage. And all who have celebrated the fall of tyranny have known the thrill of victory, the incomparable satisfaction of pulling down the monuments of the vanquished order and the unifying grief of the march behind the casket of a fallen comrade draped in national colors.

SALES of houses, co-ops and condominiums in the New York metropolitan area, still near the bottom of a slump that has been longer and deeper than any since before World War II, have improved steadily since the spring in what analysts say is the beginning of a slow recovery. Throughout the region, real estate executives say sales volume surged in March, reflecting a decline in interest rates and a sense of economic euphoria that accompanied the resolution of the war in the Persian Gulf. Sales for April, May and June were sharply higher than the year earlier.

It was a rerun of 1990, mercifully condensed. The bad guys took control of a major oil producer, and world markets plunged. Then the good guys won, and markets leaped to record highs. The difference is that the process took more than seven months to complete when Kuwait was the country. In the Soviet Union, which among other things is the world's largest oil producer, it took three days.

The abortive coup that finally broke the Communist Party's grip on the Soviet Union was a spasm of desperate nostalgia by a committee of men who saw themselves as patriots of an endangered order. In its genesis and failure, it was the most Soviet of coups, the scheme of a gray collective against the new politics of the popular hero.

400 March in Brooklyn After a week of violence, the Rev. Al Sharpton led 400 protesters through Crown Heights yesterday, as a blue wall of police insured relative quiet. The day before, black residents in the neighborhood spoke of their an ger and outrage. Page 36. New Fight on Fetal Research A Federal rule that requires the father's permission whenever the Government pays for fetal research has angered many researchers, who are finding ways around it. Page 20. News Summary, Page 2 Obituaries, Page 42 Weather, Page 43 Radio, Late TV, Page 60

It seemed such a perfect time to be at the University of Miami. A once woeful football program had achieved so much success throughout the 1980's that the power and influence of the Miami Hurricanes had to be acknowledged by the sport's establishment even if their trash-talking dance parties would never be embraced. The university's decision to abandon its traditional but risky independent status and become the jewel of the odd new Big East football conference had seemed to expand Miami's horizon, affix the program to millions of lucrative television sets in the Northeast, and define the start of a more secure era.

If the Giants, as Super Bowl champions, are the best team in pro football and if the New England Patriots, fresh from a 1-15 season, are the worst, how do you explain today's debacle? In the last preseason game for both teams, the Patriots often seemed to move the ball at will as they routed the Giants, 24-3. The Giants appeared lethargic, uninterested, unemotional. They seemed to be going through the motions. Their performance was embarrassing.

Special Today: Fashions of The Times/Magazine Part 2

A dispute between a gay couple and a co-op board has led to a settlement that borrows from the two-year-old Braschi decision, which expanded the definition of "family" in rent-controlled housing. Stephen Rzewuski and his companion, whom he did not want identified, charged that the board of 165 Duane Street, at Hudson Street, had prevented Mr. Rzewuski from co-owning his companion's co-op shares because they are unmarried and homosexual.

In the hot nursery, where the temperature is kept around 80 degrees, pigs are raised from weaning to a weight of 40 pounds, and in the adjacent, cooler nursery they grow to 100 pounds. As Dean Holderness, who raises the pigs, steps out of the building, the doorknob rattles. "Door knobs last a year, year and a half," Mr. Holderness says. Gases produced by the pigs' urine and feces corrode metal, he explains.