Reformers in Running for Soviet Posts : Lithuania Threatens Boycott, Charges Rigging of Nominees

Maverick Boris N. Yeltsin and several prominent reformers in the new congress were nominated today for a smaller, full-time legislature, but some charged that senior officials rigged the nominee list to stay in power.

Lithuania threatened to boycott the elections to the new legislature if delegates from other republics are allowed to vote on the Lithuanian slate.

The Lithuanians and other Baltic reformers want to protect their small reform slates from being lost in an all-congress vote. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev called the boycott threat “a crisis situation.”

The moves came during the second day of debate in the 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies, the first competitively elected national assembly and the latest step in the Soviet experiment with democratic reform.

Only one member of the ruling Communist Party Politburo appeared on a congressional list of nominees for the smaller law-making body, the Supreme Soviet, assuring an overhaul of its traditional makeup.

Bickering Persists

Procedural bickering today mirrored the disputes that slowed the first day of activity in the congress, which was elected this spring in the first nationwide multicandidate balloting in 70 years.

A list of 573 members of congress selected by their home regions was prepared for 542 seats in the Supreme Soviet, giving deputies few choices but setting up tough races for lawmakers from Moscow, home to many of the reformers.

“The party apparatus is once again asking us to elect the Supreme Soviet according to the old system,” complained deputy Vladimir Shevlyuga of Rostov.

Vladimir Zolotukhin of Tashkent said top party and government officials in Uzbekistan had themselves nominated without consulting other deputies from the republic.

Reformers lost an attempt to force top party officials to choose between their party jobs and serving in the Supreme Soviet, as a way of easing the grip of the party bureaucracy on the country’s legislature.