Yeltsin Strikes a New Blow : Big Republic Takes Step to Sovereignty

The Russian Federation led by Boris N. Yeltsin, the main political rival to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, declared today that its constitution now takes precedence over Soviet laws.

The Kremlin, already grappling with a Baltic independence drive that threatens to tear the country apart, seemed certain to reject the move by the Russian Federation, the biggest and most influential of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.

But Gorbachev, speaking to reporters today, expressed no apparent concern about the vote.

“The Russian Congress has not passed anything that would contradict the Soviet Constitution,” he said. “And I’m (100%) sure that neither the Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia nor the future Supreme Soviet will pass laws that would damage the development of the federation or complicate its reformation.”

The Federation Congress approved, 544 to 271, an article declaring that Soviet laws that conflict with sovereign Russian rights “are suspended by the republic on its territory,” Tass news agency reported.

It said a full declaration on sovereignty for the Russian Federation, which includes 160 million of the country’s total population of 280 million, will be ready for endorsement by the middle of next week.

Yeltsin, an outspoken critic of Gorbachev, declared after his election as Russian president two weeks ago that he will push the law through.

He also reserved the right of the Russian Federation to secede from the Soviet Union. But he has said he is not proposing this step.

The Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia took a similar move as a first step to the later declarations of independence--acts that have brought them into sharp conflict with Moscow.

The article, one point from a complex declaration on sovereignty being debated by Congress, means that the Russian Federation could overrule any law it believed conflicted with its interests.

Yeltsin has already declared his opposition to Gorbachev’s plans for steep food price rises as a first step to market reforms.

He told the Russian Congress last week that the sovereignty law would give the republic exclusive right of possession of all its natural wealth.

This would in theory give it control over the huge oil, gas and coal reserves that are the basis of the Soviet Union’s wealth in the absence of a manufacturing industry that can compete on world markets.

But these resources, as well as railways and other infrastructure, are firmly under control of the central Soviet authorities and, ultimately, of Gorbachev.

The Russian Federation includes nearly 50% of the Soviet population and three-quarters of its territory.

It is unclear how Russia could implement its final sovereignty declaration when it is passed.

But the separate endorsement of the article establishing precedence of Russian law could on its own bring Yeltsin into sharp conflict with Gorbachev.