NEWS ANALYSIS : Revitalized Soviet Parliament: ‘New, Real Power’ That Can’t Be Ignored

It surprised Western cynics, occasionally traumatized Communist Party officials and provided some of the best late-night television entertainment seen here in a long time.

But most of all, the just concluded premiere session of the revitalized national legislature served notice that after decades of being run exclusively from the top down, the system of government here has undergone a fundamental change.

No one is likely to mistake the Congress of People’s Deputies for the comparatively unfettered U.S. Congress or the British Parliament. But neither is there any comparison of the new Supreme Soviet with its predecessor, whose deputies silently raised their hands in such unanimous compliance to the party’s every whim that it set the standard for the term “rubber-stamp parliament.”

“A new, real power has emerged,” Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, premier and member of the Communist Party Politburo, told senior party leaders recently, “and we cannot ignore the fact.”

Listening to weeks of harsh parliamentary criticism of the government’s shortcomings had taught him “the meaning of the word catharsis ,” Ryzhkov said.

He said the restructured Parliament has already shown itself to be so aggressive that the mechanisms by which the party traditionally controlled virtually every aspect of Soviet public life “have become suspended in air.”

Earlier, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, head of the KGB, the feared security agency, had described his grilling by lawmakers as “the most difficult examination of my life.”

The revitalized Parliament emerged last spring in a highly complex voting procedure that for the first time forced a majority of the candidates to face genuine competition. About 85% of those elected were members of the Communist Party, but the difference now is that most are beholden as much to their constituents as to the party.

The 2,250 Congress members, who were convened in late May for the first of two scheduled sessions a year, subsequently elected from among themselves a Supreme Soviet of 542 members that serves as the full-time Parliament.

“It’s a body that has emerged very quickly into a prominent role,” a senior Western diplomat said, “and it’s a lot less conservative than many people thought it would be.”

The Supreme Soviet quickly established a precedent by rejecting a dozen of Ryzhkov’s nominees for ministerial posts, effectively making the government accountable to the public rather than the party for the first time since the earliest days of the Soviet state.

Several hundred deputies even formed the first organized parliamentary opposition group that has existed here in 70 years.

The parliamentary sessions, televised live during the initial meeting and selectively--on a delayed basis and late at night--during a six-week session of the Supreme Soviet, gave millions of ordinary citizens their first heady taste of genuine political debate.

During the session, some factories reported that up to 20% of their employees were absent, apparently staying home to watch the debate on television. While the switch to delayed coverage at night helped, it did not solve the problem.

Up Until 2 A.M.

“I’m sorry,” a Moscow woman apologized to her employer when she showed up late for work one recent morning. She and her husband had got so absorbed in a lively televised parliamentary debate over economic independence for the Baltic republics that they were up until 2 a.m., she said sheepishly.

According to Anatoly Lukyanov, first deputy president of the Supreme Soviet, 195 hours of proceedings were shown on television in a little over two months, making witnesses of millions of ordinary citizens as the deputies boldly attacked one sacred cow after another.

The televised debates spilled over into the streets, where long-apathetic Russians could suddenly be overheard talking politics on park benches and in shopping queues.

Parliamentary debate and the public mood appeared to feed on each other. The link was most obvious during last month’s coal mine strikes.

The miners, many analysts believe, were emboldened by the televised proceedings to protest what they saw as a system deaf to their needs. And the strikes triggered an extraordinary special parliamentary session that turned into a virtual declaration of no confidence in party and government officials at all levels.

While clearly interested in its work, the general public is far from enthusiastic about the results it has seen from the Supreme Soviet so far, according to a weekend poll conducted by the Sociology Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and published in the newspaper Evening Moscow.

While 70% of Muscovites responding to the survey said the Parliament was more or less democratic, 39% complained that all the deputies did was talk. Only 6% described the revitalized legislature as a major step in political reform.

A writer asked rhetorically in the latest issue of the weekly New Times: “Really, just what are we expecting from the new Supreme Soviet, that it clothe, feed, and provide better medicine for us? No one seems to be saying so directly, but in many irritated comments one can see these unfulfilled expectations: ‘We are sick of the empty shops, we must spend weeks to get even simple items, and meanwhile you are taking a full week to discuss some new minister!’ ”

More Than Just Talk

It may not have fulfilled some of the people’s more pressing desires, but the revitalized Parliament did prove itself capable of more than just talk.

It overrode the government on the language of a new law on political dissent, sharply narrowing its application and easing the penalties for violators. It reduced the maximum tax rates on cooperative businesses, giving them a new lease on life after an administrative backlash that had threatened to destroy them. It ignored the wishes of the minister of defense to permit draft exemptions for students. And it more than doubled the minimum pension level, overriding a government plan to raise the smallest pensions by only one-third.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev described himself in a recent Radio Moscow interview as “tremendously satisfied” with the new arrangement, which he described as having laid the groundwork for a genuine separation of powers between the party and popularly elected soviets, or councils, at all levels.

Gorbachev promised even more dramatic progress at the Supreme Soviet’s next session, and added: “This is why I think that now no one will dare say that perestroika (restructuring) can stop, come to a standstill. Now we can already speak of perestroika’s irreversibility, although this does not mean that it will proceed smoothly.”

A key test will be elections scheduled no later than next spring for local and republic-level soviets, Lukyanov said. The main challenge now, he said, is not so much agreeing at the top on what needs to be done, but implementing decisions down through the system.

The process “will be largely assisted by renovation of cadres to be achieved during the coming local and republic elections,” Lukyanov said.

A problem in the meantime, a senior Western analyst noted, is that the party “is losing credibility and power faster than new institutions are developing.”

This view was buttressed by the poll published in Evening Moscow, which found 69% of respondents agreeing that the party had lost prestige in the last year. More than 75% said that the party’s constitutional “leading role” in Soviet society should be modified, and more than 50% said the provision should be dropped from the constitution.