Russians Reject Gorbachev’s Appeal for New Powers, Vow to Go Their Own Way : Soviet Union: The defiant federation says it will institute a radical economic overhaul, no matter what the rest of country does. A collision is inevitable.

Boris N. Yeltsin and the rest of the Russian Federation’s leadership on Saturday rejected Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s plea for emergency powers as “impermissible” and said they will take all steps necessary to protect their giant republic’s sovereignty.

In a bold action that makes an institutional collision over Gorbachev’s request inevitable, Yeltsin and the Russian legislature’s Presidium served notice that they intend to embark in the coming days on a radical overhaul of Russia’s economy, whatever the national legislature and Gorbachev decide for the country as a whole.

Under the urging of Yeltsin, Russia’s populist president, the republic’s legislature has endorsed a 500-day program that would sell off or lease most government-owned economic assets and rapidly replace state planning with the supply-and-demand forces of a market.

Meanwhile, national lawmakers charged with choosing a reform plan for all 15 Soviet republics have dithered. Painting a dire picture of the country’s “emergency,” Gorbachev formally asked them Friday to grant him the power to issue decrees, in violation of existing law if necessary, on a broad range of topics ranging from economic management to the defense of law and order.

Gorbachev explicitly told the Supreme Soviet, as the national legislature is called, that he might have to institute direct “presidential rule” in certain places, if necessary shutting down local institutions, including elected bodies of government.

In the new Soviet political climate, where greater self-rule has become a loudly proclaimed goal and a right demanded from Kiev to Kazakhstan, those were fighting words. With its statement read on nationwide television news, the top executive body in Russia’s government served notice that if the Supreme Soviet grants Gorbachev’s wish, it will not submit.

“The granting of the requested powers to the president of the U.S.S.R. is impermissible,” the Presidium of the Russian Republic’s Supreme Soviet declared.

In the event Gorbachev is given such powers, the Russian government “will take all necessary measures to defend the sovereignty and the constitutional system of the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian republic),” it said.

The statement, signed “B. N. Yeltsin,” imperiled the uneasy but vastly important political alliance between the highly popular political maverick, whom Gorbachev once had thrown out of the Communist Party leadership, and the Soviet president.

In August, these two most powerful political figures in the Soviet Union joined to create a think tank of economists that ultimately developed the 500-day plan. Yeltsin, however, has stressed the right of the country’s biggest republic to choose its own road to economic recovery and has said he will implement the plan whatever the Supreme Soviet decides.

Were the national legislature, which reconvenes Monday, to choose the more conservative program advocated by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, or try to merge the programs, it is doubtful that any countrywide plan could function if it came into real conflict with the approach pursued by Russia, which has nearly three-quarters of the Soviet Union’s territory, half its population, and a rich concentration of its natural resources.

The Russian leadership’s statement said that “very important laws” to stabilize the republic’s economy and begin the move toward a market have already been written and will be adopted within days. Ivan S. Silyaev, Russia’s prime minister, also stressed the need for urgent action, implicitly criticizing the national legislature’s vacillation.

“I am convinced--and this conviction is shared by the deputies of our Parliament--that the more we postpone the start of the program, the worse it is for us and our people,” Silyaev told state-run television.

But for the moment, he said, old-style command techniques still must be used sometimes to obtain economic results. He announced that the Russian government had decided to extend its decree calling on universities and institutes to send students to the fields to harvest crops in danger of rotting.

“If we continue delaying the beginning of the 500-day program and persist in postponing measures aimed at the transition to a market economy, we will keep on ‘storming’ like this every day and every hour and endlessly declaring states of emergency,” Silyaev said.

On Friday, Yeltsin was in a traffic accident when his chauffeur-driven Volga was rammed by an automobile in central Moscow. An aide revealed Saturday that the strapping 59-year-old Siberian had suffered a concussion and spent the night in the hospital.