Gorbachev Is Elbowed Aside on Yeltsin’s Turf : Russian Federation: Soviet leader is bullied by his nemesis-savior. Legislators accord him tepid applause.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s admonishing forefinger froze in midair. His voice was drowned out by the cries and applause of Russian lawmakers, and Boris N. Yeltsin was not listening to him anyway.

“I am now signing a decree suspending the activities of the Russian Communist Party,” boomed Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation. And so he did, ignoring Gorbachev’s pleas--”Boris Nikolayevich . . . Boris Nikolayevich . . . “--and virtually brandishing the document in his face.

For Gorbachev to be bullied by Yeltsin, to defer to him publicly, to be forced to appeal for support to the deputies of the Russian Federation--this, it appeared Friday, is the new shape of the volatile relationship between the two titans of Soviet politics.

Formerly Yeltsin’s boss in the Communist Party, then his superior in the hierarchy of Soviet power, Gorbachev now owes his political survival--and perhaps his literal survival as well--to the snowy-haired Siberian.

And Yeltsin is not about to let him forget it.

When Gorbachev on Friday visited the Russian government building that became the bulwark of democracy during this week’s right-wing coup attempt, the shift in the power balance between the two 60-year-old men showed at every turn.

The Soviet leader received only scattered applause as he entered the Russian Parliament hall, in contrast to the standing ovation awarded Yeltsin. And as Gorbachev took the lectern to speak, Yeltsin made a point of calling on deputies to keep quiet and pay attention, as if fearing that Gorbachev no longer commanded enough basic respect to control the floor.

Gorbachev’s mission was a delicate one: to publicly thank Yeltsin and the deputies--often his political opponents in the past--for their support and the three-night vigil they stood against armed attack at the Russian headquarters, without abasing himself. Yeltsin did not make it any easier for him.

He pushed Gorbachev into reading aloud an embarrassing account of the Cabinet meeting on Monday at which all but one of Gorbachev’s handpicked ministers either sided with the coup or failed to openly oppose it. Gorbachev hesitated at first, saying he had not even had a look at the text, but complied after deputies shouted “Read it! Read it!”

“I will,” Gorbachev assured them, fighting to have his say. “I will do this. I’ll read it. But let me finish. I still haven’t read it, I have to admit.”

The Cabinet notes turned out to be a revealing rundown of how each of a dozen top ministers reacted to the coup, commenting that some waffled, some “hemmed and hawed and finally came out in favor” and others gave it their enthusiastic support.

Apparently, not one man spoke up in defense of Gorbachev, and only Nikolai N. Vorontsov, the environment minister and the only non-Communist Party member in the Cabinet, denounced the putsch.

The Soviet president, who had always responded to political attacks before with righteous anger, resorted this time to plays for sympathy in the face of the deputies’ disfavor.

When they objected to the inclusion of the chief Soviet prosecutor in the team that will investigate the coup, he replied, “My situation is hard enough right now; don’t make it more difficult for me.”

“Looking you in the eye,” Gorbachev had said earlier as he recounted his ordeal during the coup attempt, “I have to say that this was a very great trauma for me.”

More often, Gorbachev was reduced to simply pleading for patience. “I’m telling you what I think,” he said at one point. “Do I have that right? Do I have that right or not? . . . Let me finish, let me finish.”

As the 90-minute session progressed, Yeltsin allowed more and more signs of a new condescension toward Gorbachev to show.

When the Soviet president said that he considered all the decrees Yeltsin had issued during the emergency period to be legally valid, Yeltsin pressed him to validate them further by putting in, “I have asked the president of the country to put these words in the form of a decree.”

Forcing an easy tone, Gorbachev objected, “We had agreed, hadn’t we, that we weren’t going to give out all our secrets?”

“This is no secret; this is serious,” Yeltsin snapped back.

And when Gorbachev hesitated slightly as he was announcing his appointment of the new first deputy minister of defense, Yeltsin broke in to explain that the man was the current head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on defense.

“I’m not going to. . . , “ Gorbachev began to object.

“I’ve only said this because I thought you might forget,” Yeltsin said, making Gorbachev appear either near-senile or underhanded.

His irritation showing, Gorbachev said, “Look, a lot of decisions have been made,” all of which, he said, will be issued in written form in the next few days.

“Don’t get upset now,” a smug Yeltsin replied.

Yeltsin came closest to showing actual contempt for Gorbachev in another exchange over decrees, when Gorbachev refused to give automatic approval to Yeltsin’s emergency decree putting all enterprises in Russia under the jurisdiction of the republic’s government rather than the Kremlin.

“I do not think that you have managed to put me into a trap by bringing me here,” Gorbachev said as he resisted Yeltsin’s pressure.

Yeltsin’s response had an almost childish air of tit-for-tat, of deciding to hit back at Gorbachev where it would hurt.

Holding up his pen, he said, “Comrades, I am now signing a decree on suspending the activity of the Russian Communist Party.”

Gorbachev, who has proclaimed himself ever a true Communist, attempted to use flattery to head off the move.

Noting that not all members of the party had supported the coup, he said that “to prohibit the Communist Party would be a mistake for such a democratic Supreme Soviet, and such a democratic Russian president.”

Yeltsin was not to be stopped. “The decree is signed,” he said, although he pointed out that the order was not an actual ban, only a temporary suspension until the courts could determine the guilt of various members.

Like Yeltsin, the Russian lawmakers were clearly feeling a certain superiority to the man whom they felt they had saved.

One deputy questioned whether Gorbachev had enough will to punish all those who had helped the coup, and another asked pointedly: “Today, it’s clear that the only support you ever had was from the Parliament of Russia. Do you understand that?”

“I understand that we need each other,” he responded.

Gorbachev’s appearance at the Russian Parliament appeared to be an act of contrition, a conscious walk into humiliation in repentance for his mistakes.

But he may not have reckoned on the ultimate blow. As his car was leaving the building’s grounds, more than 1,000 demonstrators surrounded his car and jeered him, witnesses said.

The man who has become accustomed to being surrounded by adoring fans in foreign countries was confronted by signs reading “The Blood of the Dead Is on Your Hands” and simply “Resign!”

After about half an hour, a contingent of 20 armed guards helped the car escape, reports said.

GORBACHEV’S REMARKS--Excerpts from the Soviet leader’s speech. A6