Yeltsin Leads Vote for Top Republic Post

Boris N. Yeltsin, the populist who has campaigned for more radical reforms of the Soviet political and economic system, appeared to be close Friday to election as the chairman of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies, the Parliament of the Soviet Union’s largest republic.

Yeltsin, whose platform directly challenged many of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policies, including the controversial new economic program, won more votes than the other contender for the potentially powerful post, but not the absolute majority needed for election.

He received 497 votes--24 more than Ivan K. Polozkov, a Communist Party leader from Krasnodar in southern Russia--but this was short of the 531 required, and deputies are scheduled to gather again this morning to take another vote.

Yeltsin’s principal rival had been the Russian republic’s prime minister, Alexander V. Vlasov, who was widely regarded as Gorbachev’s nominee in the election. But he withdrew unexpectedly Friday afternoon when his certain defeat became clear after party officials canvassed the deputies.

“Conditions require we make a choice--I withdraw my candidacy,” Vlasov told the startled deputies.

Regarded as an able administrator, Vlasov was not to be sacrificed in a futile attempt to defeat Yeltsin, according to informed Soviet observers, and Polozkov, a conservative, was promised strong party support if he remained in what became head-to-head competition with Yeltsin after 10 other candidates also withdrew.

Communist Party members are being told that they will be required under party discipline to support its nominee, and officials apparently hope that they can reverse a number of votes as well as locate those who did not participate in Friday evening’s vote.

Although the powers of the chairman of the Russian congress are not yet clearly defined, Yeltsin intends to act as if he were “president of Russia” if elected and to use the post to push for bolder and faster reforms than Gorbachev favors.

Russia must be brought “out of crisis,” he declared Friday to the deputies. He lambasted the economic reforms presented by the government a day earlier for “creating panic in the stores” as mobs of shoppers stripped stores in Moscow and other cities of whatever they could find, anticipating sharp price increases and even more acute shortages.

He urged the sale of state property to finance the reforms, more liberal legislation permitting private businesses and foreign loans to underwrite the transition so that “not everything is falling on the shoulders of the people.”

The government’s reform program, dramatized by the panic buying, helped Yeltsin, according to Soviet political observers, for his ideas seemed all the more cogent and worth trying.

His advisers had estimated that he could count on no more than 400 votes, mostly from members of the loose radical-reformist alliance Democratic Russia, and could only hope for protracted elections to bring him to the top.

In his speech to the Congress, Yeltsin outlined a program, point by point, that would promote Russian nationalism and protect the republic’s sovereignty; concentrate state construction on building new houses; attempt to flood the market with consumer goods and re-establish the buying power of the ruble, and give primacy to the market forces of supply and demand.

Much of this was an open challenge to Gorbachev, and the Soviet leader on Wednesday, anticipating Yeltsin’s candidacy, had ventured onto the floor of the congress to denounce Yeltsin’s plans for greater Russian autonomy as tantamount to “the breakup of the Soviet Union” and an effort to bring socialism to an end.

Yeltsin replied Friday with characteristic candor, his voice booming through the halls of the Kremlin.

“I am not for socialism for socialism’s sake,” he said. “I am for a government the people respect and for a government that respects the people.”

His platform drew unexpected and uncharacteristic praise from state-run television, whose commentator said, “Having heard all the contenders, I can say that his program for the rebirth of Russia came off as the best argued and most thought-through,” the commentator said in summing up the platforms that were actually put to the deputies Friday.

The Russian republic, the largest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, stretches across the Eurasian landmass from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. It constitutes about two-thirds of the country’s territory and has a population of 147 million, just over half of the Soviet population.

Much of the Soviet Union’s wealth is found in the republic, and Yeltsin argued that this should be used primarily for the development of Russia, not squandered in faraway countries or even remote areas of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin was questioned closely about his relations with Gorbachev, who had promoted him to the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo when he was the party leader in Moscow and then fired him in October, 1987, for what was described as a lack of political maturity.

“I am for business-like relations, dialogue and negotiations with the president and the government, but on the principle that Russia’s sovereignty is not damaged,” Yeltsin told the deputies. “If there was or is something personal, I will set it aside.”

Polozkov, 55, an economist and a long-time party official, made clear where he stood by asserting that the country should not abandon socialism in introducing elements of the market into its economy.

“The Soviet Union has made a socialist choice and must proceed along those lines,” he said. “I am for a market in principle, but at the same time I regard as dangerous idealizing the idea of a market economy, particularly one based on private ownership of the means of production.”

Identifying himself with Yegor K. Ligachev, the leading conservative in the Politburo and Yeltsin’s favorite target in attacking the party hierarchy, Polozkov left no doubt about his politics.

“He has gone down a long road,” he said of Ligachev. “He does not change his views according to fluctuations, and I respect him.”