Russian Laws to Supersede National Law : Soviet Union: The Russian legislature challenged President Gorbachev’s grip on the republic and gave a boost to Boris Yeltsin with a declaration that its own laws have priority.

The Russian legislature voted Friday to declare that its laws have priority over those of the Soviet Union’s central government, challenging President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s grip on the country’s largest republic.

By a vote of 544-271, the new Russian Congress of People’s Deputies decided to include a clause on the primacy of Russia’s laws in a sovereignty declaration it will pass this week.

Approval of the clause was a major victory for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who hopes to make the Soviet Union’s largest republic virtually independent of central control.

The clause would establish “the supremacy of the constitution and laws of the Russian Federation on its entire territory.”

“U.S.S.R. laws that conflict with the sovereign rights of the Russian Federation are suspended by the republic on its territory,” the measure says.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all passed similar acts on the primacy of local laws on their way to independence declarations, and Moscow has declared them invalid.

Gorbachev discounted Friday’s preliminary decision, saying the Congress “had not yet adopted anything that would violate the Soviet constitution” and that he was sure that it would not.

However, he warned that “Russia’s people will not tolerate those who would push them to a confrontation among ethnicities and disintegration of the Union.”

Gorbachev has accused Yeltsin of supporting policies that would lead to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin, who smiled broadly after the results were announced, refused to comment until the adoption of the sovereignty declaration.

But leaders of the radical Democratic Russia bloc, the backbone of Yeltsin’s support in the Congress, said Friday’s voting would mark a turning point in Soviet history.

“Today’s was an epoch-making event because the priority of republican laws over those of the (Soviet) Union will transform the entire structure of our union,” said Viktor Dementyev, a member of Democratic Russia’s coordinating council.

Fyodor Shelov-Kovedyaev, a member of the committee drafting the sovereignty declaration, described Friday’s vote as an affirmation of Russian independence.

“That we are declaring our laws on our territory to be higher than those of the union says that we are becoming an independent state,” Shelov-Kovedyaev said.

More conservative deputies were dismayed by the decision, saying that Russia would be hurt by conflicts with the central government and other republics.

“There should have been a softer formulation that would take into account the interests of the entire Union and as well as Russia,” said Ivan Rymorov, a deputy who is also a lieutenant general in the Soviet Army.

Rymorov said that Russia’s security could be harmed by a looser federation with the other 14 Soviet republics.

“No single republic, including Russia, is competent to resolve the question of the country’s defense,” Rymorov said.

Yeltsin--who lost his post as Moscow’s party leader and candidate membership in the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo after criticizing Gorbachev’s reforms as too slow in November, 1987--became Russia’s effective president two weeks ago by a narrow four votes over a required majority in the Congress.

Friday’s vote was the first concrete evidence of the legislature’s support for Yeltsin’s plan to “invert the pyramid” of the Soviet Union, putting Russia’s interests before those of the central government.

“The position of Yeltsin for possible negotiations with Gorbachev has sharply improved,” said Oleg Rumyantsev, another Democratic Russia leader.

No such negotiations, which would presumably center on issues of Russian autonomy, have yet been set.

The Congress, which Friday began selecting a smaller standing Parliament called the Supreme Soviet from among its members, will discuss the entire sovereignty declaration and means for implementing it Wednesday.

The Russian republic, officially called the Russian Federation because of the many small ethnic groups that live within it, covers three-fourths of the land mass of the Soviet Union, including all of Siberia. It has more than half the nation’s population of 280 million.

Abundant in gold, oil and timber, the Russian Federation produces 70% of the industrial and agricultural product of the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin argues that Russia’s people live more poorly than in other parts of the Soviet Union because of low centrally set prices for the raw materials it sells to other republics.