Rivals Gorbachev, Yeltsin Show Rare Solidarity at Meeting : Soviet Union: The two usually are at odds. But a huddle to chart the troubled nation’s future is considered ‘a great leap forward.’

In the context of recent Soviet politics, it was an epoch-making event: For eight hours, the country’s two most powerful men met in a two-story mansion on Moscow’s outskirts to discuss how to salvage their crumbling state and managed not to exchange a single cross word.

“This is an exceptional thing--the first time ever,” Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian Federation’s radical leader, said Saturday of the propitious and “businesslike” atmosphere that prevailed when he huddled with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and leaders of other Soviet republics in an attempt to chart the nation’s future.

As recently as March, Yeltsin had been demanding the resignation of Gorbachev, whom he branded a born dictator. But a sort of entente cordiale is now blossoming as the erstwhile rivals pool their forces to deal with the concurrent and worsening crises of a disintegrating political structure and an economy in full decline.

Meeting the press at the end of a special session of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies that created a powerful executive Russian presidency that he is expected to win handily in elections next month, Yeltsin said Saturday that the treaty long sought by Gorbachev to codify the realignment of political power here could be ready for signing by next month.

Most of the republics participating in talks on the Union Treaty want the country’s new name to be the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, Yeltsin said, which would shed the socialist label that reflects almost three-quarters of a century of adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideals.

The new name, in Russian, would have the same Cyrillic initials as the old--C.C.C.P.

Yeltsin also conspicuously aligned himself with Gorbachev in the Kremlin leader’s attempt to win massive Western assistance to resuscitate flagging Soviet industry and agriculture. Such solidarity is indispensable if any aid program is to avoid falling prey to the warring bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, the biggest, richest and most populous of the Soviet republics.

“If there are no reforms in this country, the cataclysm will shake all countries of the world, including the U.S.A.,” Yeltsin warned. Estimating the amount of help envisioned from the West, he said, “We are talking about $15 billion to $20 billion,” evidently meaning the country’s yearly needs.

Yeltsin ally Grigory A. Yavlinksy heads a group of Soviet economists now at Harvard University drafting a plan that would link Western aid to specific moves by the Kremlin leadership toward a market economy and more democratic institutions.

Gorbachev wants to meet with leaders of the seven largest industrialized democracies in London in July to deliver the Soviet wish list. Doubtless articulating official Kremlin thinking, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda argued Saturday that it would be cheaper for the United States and Europe to bankroll Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms now, rather than watch them fail and have to engage in a new arms race with a more reactionary Soviet leadership later.

At Novo-Ogarevo outside Moscow, a marathon meeting Friday in a turn-of-the-century yellow and white mansion brought together Gorbachev, top officials of the national legislature, Yeltsin and leaders of other Soviet republics in an attempt to achieve consensus on a proposed Union Treaty that would shift many of the powers now held by the national government to the individual republics.

In eight hours of virtually nonstop talks that lasted past 10:30 p.m., according to the official Soviet Tass news agency, Gorbachev and the conferees decided to order a preparatory commission into permanent session with the goal of producing a final document next month.

In remarks to Soviet television, an obviously delighted Gorbachev hailed the accomplishments of the meeting as “a great leap forward.”

Disputes remain, however, and Yeltsin listed three: the central government’s insistence on a two-tier fiscal system that would enable it to levy direct taxes on the republics; Russia’s declaration that it, and not the Kremlin, should control local defense industries, and similar conflicting claims over who owns Russia’s gigantic oil and gas reserves.

But it was evident from Yeltsin’s account that the leaders were showing a new penchant for compromise. Asked about his relations at the moment with Gorbachev, a man who was once his mentor but later had him fired as Moscow’s Communist Party boss, Yeltsin said: “Each has personally taken steps toward the other.”

In the larger sense, Yeltsin said a political realignment had occurred, benefiting Soviet pro-reform forces.

“January, February and March were the worst months from the viewpoint of the political situation,” the 60-year-old Yeltsin said. “Right-wing forces consolidated and began their offensive. . . . Right-wing forces even pulled the president (Gorbachev) along with them. At the time, I even had to make the statement demanding his resignation to warn that we would not turn away from the path we were taking.

“At that time, the president realized that he also had to rely on the left flank, otherwise he would lose,” Yeltsin said.

A “certain warming” ensued, and on April 23, when it seemed that Gorbachev might be ousted as Communist Party general secretary, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, plus the leaders of eight other Soviet republics, agreed at Novo-Ogarevo on the principles for a new Union Treaty to preserve the country, but on a freer, decentralized basis.

The burying of the hatchet between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, even if it proves temporary, enabled the usually raucous Russian Congress to hold its shortest session ever. Archconservative Communist leader Ivan K. Polozkov, Yeltsin’s political enemy, marveled that the five-day gathering of more than 1,000 legislators in the Grand Kremlin Palace was “unusually calm.”

Yeltsin did not get everything he wanted, as the congress heeded conservatives and sheared the new presidency of the power to fire regional officials who obstruct reforms. Likewise, legislators on Saturday failed to elect a Russian Constitutional Court, an institution designed to introduce U.S.-style judicial review and separation of powers.

With the congress over, Soviet politics is poised to enter a new phase as Yeltsin, the overwhelming favorite among six candidates, opens his quest for the new Russian presidency, to be filled in June 12 elections.

On Tuesday, Yeltsin begins a grueling round of travel that will take him from Murmansk, beyond the Arctic Circle, to Sverdlovsk, the Ural Mountains factory town where he was once the Communist Party boss.

Talking to reporters in the Kremlin’s gold-hued Hall of Facets, where czars once received foreign ambassadors, Yeltsin offered several glimpses of his campaign strategy, and it looked a lot like the “Rose Garden” tactics used by incumbent U.S. presidents.

For example, although he rarely minces words, Yeltsin refused to criticize other candidates, saying, “My principle is never to discuss rivals in a negative way.”

Also like a U.S. incumbent, Yeltsin ostensibly intends to go about the job of governing first, even if it may appear that he is running hard for office. Asked whether foreign correspondents will be allowed to cover his campaign travels, Yeltsin objected that his swing from the far north to the Urals is “a business trip, not a pre-election one.”