After Rebuff, Gorbachev’s Nominee Is OKd

In a real Kremlin cliffhanger, the Soviet Parliament hit President Mikhail S. Gorbachev with a stunning rebuff on Thursday by rejecting his nominee for vice president, then reversed itself to approve the same man when Gorbachev risked his political authority to renominate him.

Gorbachev insisted that he would accept only Gennady I. Yanayev, 53, a longtime Communist Party functionary, for the newly created post of vice president because he needed a man he could trust at his side.

As lawmakers went to cast their ballots for or against Yanayev on Thursday morning, it appeared that this would be just one more case of the Parliament giving the Soviet president almost anything he asked for after a democratic show of raising objections from the floor.

But two hours later, a collective gasp swept through the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament, when it was announced that Yanayev had fallen 31 votes short of the 1,120 he needed to be confirmed, although he was unopposed on the ballot.

A hubbub of speculation followed. What would Gorbachev do now? Who else could he nominate when he had seemed to have such a hard time coming up with Yanayev?

A grim Gorbachev left little time for doubt.

Saying that he sees the new leadership team he is trying to gather around him as a “last chance” group that should certainly be ousted if it cannot bring the country out of crisis, he announced: “Once again, I propose the candidacy of Yanayev.

“I want a person next to me whom I can fully trust in this important and crucial moment,” Gorbachev said, in a reflection of the dwindling number of close comrades around him.

Last week, one of the Soviet president’s strongest allies, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, resigned in an emotional speech warning of a coming dictatorship. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, the last of Gorbachev’s inner circle from the early days of perestroika in 1985, suffered a serious heart attack.

Yanayev, in the tense minutes during the second balloting, told reporters in the airy, marble-floored lobby of the Congress that he had wanted to withdraw after failing in the first vote but ran again “at the request of the president.”

Some deputies said they voted against him because he appeared too conservative, or had no expertise in economics, or because they were insulted that the president had chosen a relative unknown and failed to consult with them.

Yanayev himself, however, said he believed that his first try failed in part because deputies wanted to express their opposition to the president’s policies in a reflection of “the political struggle under way in society.”

The Congress, the highest authority in the Soviet government, began as an obedient political tool for Gorbachev when it first convened in May, 1989. But at its fourth session, which ended Thursday, it showed more than ever that it has a mind of its own, denying the Soviet president several key measures.

Gorbachev backers resorted to a powerful emotional onslaught on recalcitrant deputies, using pathos, scare tactics and guilt to secure Yanayev’s nomination.

David N. Kugultinov, a writer, told the Congress it had put the president in the position of a young man who says, “I want to marry a lovely girl, but my parents say no.”

Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, president of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, called on deputies to “demonstrate, not only to the Congress and the whole country but to the whole world, our support for the president at this critical period. Otherwise, what kind of position will we put him in?”

Yanayev racked up 1,237 votes in the repeat balloting, and a sense of palpable relief came over the hall.

Looking worn, with his large eyes red and twitching and his salt-and-pepper hair slightly mussed, he acknowledged his election with a solemn wave.

“The Congress had scared itself with what it did,” Longinas Vasiliauskas, a Lithuanian observer at the Parliament, commented.

Yanayev, the former chairman of the Soviet Council of Trade Unions, told his first news conference as vice president Thursday evening that he would take up his duties today.

These are vaguely defined in the constitutional amendment that created his post this week, but Yanayev said he planned to concentrate on “questions of the economy, the budget . . . and the search for solutions to ethnic conflict.” The vice president also replaces the president when he is away, but his powers during that period are not clear.

Yanayev pledged total loyalty to Gorbachev, saying “the vice president should carry out the president’s orders, and the president, given his dynamic character, can issue any orders.”