NEWS ANALYSIS : Hard Realities Provide Push for New Union

No sooner had 10 of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics declared their independence than most were working Monday to establish another union binding themselves together again.

Hard realities, political as well as economic, made a loosely structured confederation more attractive for most than complete, go-it-alone independence.

And what Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the leaders of the 10 republics proposed on Monday is, in essence, an accelerated transition from the collapse of the Soviet empire to modern commonwealth of nation-states that are united, first of all, by economic interests.

The Soviet Union will be transformed, if the plan succeeds, from a “prison of nations,” as the Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin had described old czarist Russia, to a “Union of Sovereign States” that, in time, could re-emerge on the international scene as very much the rival of the United States, the European Community and Japan.

Although the basic, seven-point plan outlined on Monday will require much work and more tough negotiations before it takes constitutional form, the underlying vision represents one of the boldest political innovations to emerge from the revolutionary upheaval under way in the Soviet Union.

The proposal put forward by Gorbachev and the republic leaders asserted that the defeat of the conservative coup d’etat last month had created “a historic chance . . . to accelerate the reform and renovation of the country.”

The bold, decisive steps necessary for the completion of perestroika, as Gorbachev’s reforms are known, were finally possible, the declaration said, and with that would now come an even more sweeping transformation of the country.

The argument was appealing, for Gorbachev now appears to have new support from the republics. They had sorely missed him, it was said, while he was captive of the rightist putsch for four days. In his reluctance to let them opt for independence, there was still a willingness to let them go.

Even the headlong drive for independence over the past two weeks had proved sobering. The country’s wholesale disintegration would serve no one, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev told the Congress on behalf of the other leaders.

Implicit was the question that has so worried the West: Could the Soviet Union break up peacefully?

After a night of discussion, Gorbachev and the republic leaders had posed another: Need the Soviet Union break up at all?

Under their proposal, those republics that wished to secede, notably the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, should be able now to do so without further restrictions.

Equally important, those republics that wish to remain will decide themselves how to participate in the new union. Although the structure will be weak, the voluntary nature of the commitment should give it strength.

A common market will be quickly established with even those republics that secede invited to join. Radical economic reforms will be promoted so that the free-market forces of supply and demand, entrepreneurship and private ownership predominate. The goal is to reunite suppliers and buyers on this new economic basis and rebuild what was the world’s second largest economy.

And “collective security,” the foundation of so many defensive, multinational alliances in the 20th Century, will replace the military assertiveness characteristic of a superpower.

As outlined by the republic leaders at the Congress of People’s Deputies on Monday, the new union’s differences with the old Soviet Union begin with a truly voluntary association, an end to its Soviet and socialist ideology and an acceptance, an exaltation even, of the vibrant nationalism upon which most modern European states were founded.

These are some of the same forces, in fact, that underlie the European Community, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Commonwealth and even NATO, that anti-Communist bulwark.

But with the same distrust that many of the American Founding Fathers had of centralized power, the republic leaders would sharply curtail the tendency of “the center,” as it is known, to set the agenda, political or economically. And like the United States, under the proposed plan, the Union of Sovereign States could move after several years experience toward a more federal system--but based on mutual advantage rather than the dictate of Moscow.

There were also comparisons Monday between the new Soviet plan and Britain’s process of decolonization and the formation of the Commonwealth, a system that ended what had been imposed from abroad but retained on a voluntary basis what was useful. The Soviet ties of 70 years may prove nearly as hard to break as those of colonial rule.

Whatever the origins of the proposed system, there are profound implications: The central government’s role will be much reduced even from that sought by Gorbachev earlier in a more tightly bound federation; various republics will participate in various ways and in various degrees; most political decisions will have to be made by consensus.

The loosely structured confederation that should emerge will, nevertheless, incorporate important checks and balances.

Russia, the largest, richest and most populous republic, will not be able to dictate to the other republics, as the central government has long done; the equality in voting, at least in the transitional structures, gives even the smallest republic unprecedented political leverage.

For smaller republics, which last week were hastening to declare their independence, these restraints on what is already called Great Russia may alone have justified Monday’s agreement. The dominance of Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian Federation president, already worries many.

While the Baltic states’ desire for full and unequivocal independence was indisputable, some Soviet republics, such as Kirghizia and Uzbekistan, may well have declared their “independence” to enter the new union on an equal footing with Russia and the Ukraine.

“It was a question of political maturity for some,” Georgy Shaknazarov, a leading political scientist and Gorbachev adviser, told reporters. “Unless they enter the new relationship as proven and recognized adults, they will always be treated as children, the younger brothers of Russia.

“We also came to understand, however, that after 70 years we have so many ties that it is very hard just to break away,” he added. “In fact, no one wants to break away. What people want is a balanced and profitable relationship. That’s what we are trying to create. Democracy demands it.”

For Russia, stability on its “periphery,” as the border regions are quaintly known, has always been important strategically but now it is economic stability--steady trade in Russian natural resources for food, for consumer goods, for high-tech products--that is most important.

Decades of economic integration made the republics far more dependent on each other than any wanted to admit, and with that integration came political leverage.

As the Kremlin found out last year in its economic blockade of Lithuania--with millions waiting to buy top-quality Soviet televisions--no oil means no electricity, which means no television tuners, which means no television sets. Put another way, independence could well mean loss of important old markets, which had been established by central state planning but which local industries needed badly. The buyer-seller relationship needed to be changed, not abolished, and that was a message that carried through the whole economy.

“Russia has raw materials--oil, gas, timber, minerals, coal--that it can sell anywhere,” said Arkady Volsky, once a senior Communist Party official and now a prominent business spokesman. “But the other republics have goods available at prices that Russia can’t find anywhere else. So, that’s a deal. That’s the reality of our economy.”

The inter-republic common market proposed Monday as the economic successor to the Soviet Union more than perpetuates the old buyer-seller relationship; it would now be based on market value, not prices set by central bureaucrats accordir consumer products.

But other forces were at work, too.

The Soviet Union is caught up in a classic revolutionary situation, in which the winners rule, remaking the government and writing a new constitution. The defeat of the rightist coup was a victory, first of all, of the Russian people; yet, here were republics, some of which had tacitly supported the putsch, claiming the fruits of that victory.

Gorbachev was clearly not the author of the new plan, which differed so sharply from his desire for a strong federal government. The coup had shown him to be without a real power base and dependent, almost totally, on the support that others, such as Yeltsin as president of Russia, could muster for him. Yet, Gorbachev could not be called the loser for it was he who, over the past six years, had suggested a new commonwealth of nations as they emerged from the Kremlin’s totalitarian rule.

He had, no doubt, envisioned it differently--the Soviet Union largely intact, its secessionist republics still associated economically, its allies in Eastern Europe still economic partners. But, suddenly, out of the chaos of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, it had become the most appealing vision for many.