Yeltsin Gains New Powers, Boost to Presidential Aims : Soviet Union: The Russian leader survives a conservative challenge to win a stronger position from which to confront archrival Gorbachev.

A beaming Boris N. Yeltsin emerged victorious on Friday from a nine-day Congress session, which, instead of dumping him from the Russian leadership as conservatives had plotted, ended up granting him greater powers and bolstering his chances to become Russia’s first popularly elected president.

Yeltsin--who thus politically survived the latest attack from Communist Party conservatives at the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies--told reporters that he will use his new authority to help would-be private farmers acquire land and to push ahead with free-market economic reforms.

And for the third time in recent days, the Russian Federation leader proposed that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, his political archrival, meet with him and leaders of other parties and movements for “round-table talks” on forming a coalition government and fostering national consensus.

“At the round table,” Yeltsin said, “Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the chairmen and presidents of other Soviet republics and leaders of parties and movements, workers and strikers (should gather) to defend peace and consensus.”

Yeltsin had called last month for Gorbachev to resign.

But he since has softened his attacks on the Soviet president.

“The president of the U.S.S.R. and the national leadership should know,” Yeltsin said, “that no disagreements, no matter how strong, will become an obstacle for cooperation between the national and Russian leaderships.”

But a new challenge to Gorbachev’s leadership appeared to gather momentum on Friday.

Yeltsin said at a Kremlin news conference that the conservative group Soyuz had gathered enough signatures to call an emergency session of the national Parliament to conduct a no-confidence vote in Gorbachev’s administration. According to Leonid Gurevich, a radical Russian deputy, rumors abounded at the Congress that the Communist Party is also planning to call a special meeting to remove Gorbachev as its general secretary.

Four left-wing groups rallied to support Gorbachev on Friday, distancing themselves from both earlier radical calls for his resignation and the new right-wing move.

Yeltsin’s new powers, though ill-defined and temporary, put him in a stronger position from which to challenge Gorbachev. If popular elections for the Russian presidency happen on June 12, as now officially scheduled, Yeltsin would gain a level of political legitimacy that could put Gorbachev, who was only elected by Parliament, to shame.

But Yeltsin denied vehemently all suggestions that he is seeking some kind of dictatorship with his new powers and the push for the presidency. He insisted that he is only trying to make his government more effective.

The resolution formally approved Friday at the Congress, Russia’s highest governmental body, gives Yeltsin the right to issue “directives” and to take “urgent measures” in Russia. It also transfers some of the giant Congress’ powers to the smaller working legislature, the Supreme Soviet.

Yeltsin admitted that he himself did not understand exactly what new, concrete powers he will have. “I haven’t quite caught that yet,” he said with a smile, apparently only half-joking, when asked exactly how his role, technically as chairman of the Supreme Soviet, will change.

Svetlana Goryacheva, his rebellious deputy, said that Gorbachev too had proposed more than a year ago that he receive special powers as a cure-all for the Soviet Union’s ills, but that “nothing has changed in the country.”

Lev Shemayev, a Yeltsin aide, said the Russian leader’s first priority will be to make reluctant collective farms and local councils sell land to individuals under Russia’s new land reform law. The reform is aimed at parceling out parts of the collective and state farms that dominate Soviet agriculture to private farmers likely to produce more. But the measure has been stymied in much of the Russian hinterland by officials’ refusal to comply with the law.

Shemayev said Yeltsin also could step in to end the five-week miners’ strike that has spread across much of the Soviet Union. This might be done by arranging greater financial independence and better supplies and subsidies for miners. But thus far, he has only endorsed creation of a new commission on the miners’ demands.

Yeltsin enjoys huge popularity among the Russian masses but only mixed support in his own Congress, which had called its most recent sessions, conservatives said, to “bring him to account.” He appeared to take a major risk in assuming the new powers but said he will take “full responsibility” for the results.

“Yeltsin is not afraid and he is not being sly and he’s not being cunning,” said Gurevich, the radical Russian deputy. “Either we get the chance to work, or why bother playing games?”

But the new arrangement is so circumspect and expected to last so briefly--just until the presidential elections this summer--that it is likely to end up only a stopgap with minimal political consequences. The new momentum it gives Yeltsin is also likely to stall when it runs up against the prolonged deadlock in the Supreme Soviet between conservatives and radicals.

Still, members of the left-wing Democratic Russia bloc of Yeltsin supporters in the Russian Congress were ecstatic that the resolution on the new powers--an unmistakable endorsement of Yeltsin’s leadership--received 607 votes, a healthy majority. There were 228 votes against it. It was their biggest parliamentary victory in months.

“We’re having a holiday of the soul and heart,” one Democratic Russia member said in the Kremlin lobby as he shook another deputy’s hand after the vote.

Yeltsin’s victory came as a surprise after he had failed repeatedly to gain the 532 votes he needed to put the question of creating the Russian presidency on the Congress’ agenda; 70% of Russians who voted in a March 17 referendum backed the idea of a popularly elected Russian president. But the Congress voted not to discuss the issue until it meets again in late May.

YELTSIN’S NEW POWERS

Russian leader Boris Yeltsin won approval from the Russian Federation Parliament for new powers that should give him more leverage in his standoff with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev :

AUTHORITY. Yeltsin can now issue “directives” in Russia, the biggest and richest Soviet republic.

APPROVAL. The resolution adopted transfers many powers from Russia’s fractious Parliament to its smaller legislature, the Supreme Soviet, which has been more cooperative with Yeltsin.

ENFORCEMENT. Yeltsin was given no enforcement powers, such as a long-discussed Russian army, and there was no assurance local officials would obey his decrees.