Lawmakers Run a Gantlet of Hecklers and Placards

When Maj. Vadim Urvant stepped out of the sheltered confines of the Soviet Congress on Monday, he faced a human gantlet of political anger. It stretched its serpentine line of placards and furious hecklers more than 50 yards from the gates of the Kremlin to St. Basil’s Cathedral.

The genial officer squared his shoulders and marched grimly through the hundreds of protesters as they chanted, “Dis-so-lu-tion! Dis-so-lu-tion!”--their way of demanding that the Congress of People’s Deputies admit that it has done nothing for the people, that it give up and that it go home for good.

The wan, shabby, gold-toothed people, arrayed in a double line, yelled at each of the natty deputies who emerged. But they reserved extra volume for Communist Party apparatchiks.

“You can tell it’s them because they’re afraid of the people,” said Nina Shpirt, a doctor who held up a sign calling on party members to quit the Congress. “The honest ones smile as they walk by, but the party apparatchiks walk proudly and they don’t look at people. And they’re solid and look better than most--they are well-fed men.”

The 2,250-member Congress of People’s Deputies, the highest power in the land and the centerpiece of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms, opened Monday to the news that the people it is supposed to serve hold it in utter contempt and that the country the group is supposed to rule appears to have official consent from the top to break up.

“You know what agony is? This is agony,” Maj. Vladimir Zolotukhin said in the marble-floored corridor of the Palace of Congresses.

There have been small protests outside previous Congress sessions, but never before have deputies undergone the likes of this--verbal floggings by almost 1,000 people along almost every step of the route to the Rossiya Hotel, where most of them stay.

The public anger still simmering in the wake of last month’s failed coup appeared to have found a new target in the Congress and a new outlet in the merciless screaming at deputies. As one lawmaker with a Red Star medal hanging on his chest passed through, a man in the crowd taunted, “Some hero! You’ve ruined the country! You’re a hero and we have nothing to eat!”

“Hey, what big Bolsheviks you are!” others called, making the old term of praise sound like a dirty word.

The anger on the streets combined with Gorbachev’s surprise maneuver on Monday morning--an unexpected plan to revamp the country’s government to give more weight and freedom to the 15 republics, doing away with the Congress along the way--has left many deputies demoralized.

Yegor Yakovlev, the new chief of state television, noted that with the recent political changes and those coming up, “This hall is a live corpse.”

With the Communist Party discredited and temporarily banned after it played a prominent role in the coup attempt, the large bust and mosaic profile of Bolshevik founder V. I. Lenin were gone from the massive stage. But the hall was still a gray sea of middle-aged men, raised on party-style obedience and now obviously at a loss in a game where all the rules had changed.

Gorbachev’s proposal brought grumbling from conservatives. But only Victor Alksnis, a leading reactionary, leaped to the rostrum as soon as a break was called to declare: “What’s happening now is an anti-constitutional coup!”

The other members of his rightist faction were surprisingly docile.

Col. Nikolai Petrushenko, who with Alksnis has earned the nickname of being one of the “Black Colonels” for his reactionary views, commented mildly: “The proposed variation means the collapse of the government--what is proposed cannot be the successor to the Soviet Union as a great atomic power.” And Yuri Blokhin, one of the leaders of the conservative Soyuz faction, asked from the rostrum for “any serious compromise--anything that will keep the Soviet Union together.”

In the halls and cloakrooms, lawmakers talked about the break-up of the Soviet Union and the probable end of their tenure as deputies.

“I’m hurting for the union,” said former Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, referring to the old tight bonds between the country’s 15 republics. “There has to be a union, but it will take another form.”

Gorbachev’s offer, as part of the reorganization proposal, to keep deputies on until the planned end of their five-year terms left many with their pride smarting, sure they were being thrown crumbs to buy their compliance. “It’s humiliating,” said Iya Yegorova of the mountainous Altai region. “We’re put in a very awkward position.”

Tatiana Shmonina, from the Far Eastern port of Magadan, chimed in: “It’s like we’re pawns in a big political game.” If the plan to phase out the Congress goes through, she added, “I’ll give up my deputy’s card right away.”

Yegorova, speaking of the reconfiguration of the Soviet Union, observed, “Psychologically, this is all very hard to digest.

“Our older generation takes this with bitterness and pain,” she added. “But we understand that we woke up to a different country on the 21st” of August, the day the coup was decisively defeated. “It’s hard, but we’ll live through it. I’m still a citizen of this country and still proud of being one.”

Shmonina, too, was philosophical about the changes. “The Soviet Union already doesn’t exist,” she said. “You can’t cry over something that’s already gone.”

If the deputies were pained, the demonstrators outside the Congress were positively joyful about the pending changes in the Soviet structure.

“The people are for every republic to be free and independent,” said artist Kira Gavrilova. “Only the central government has been holding them back.”

Latest Developments

* UNITY. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and leaders of 10 Soviet republics proposed creating a loose federation that would strip the Kremlin of most of its responsibilities. Under a plan read to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the republics would have far more power, and central authorities would control little more than defense and foreign affairs. The proposal, which calls for an interim government consisting of three councils, headed off another attempt by hard-liners to remove Gorbachev as Soviet president.

* THE CONGRESS: Deputies arriving at the Congress of People’s Deputies had to run a gantlet of hecklers. Hundreds of protesters chanted “Dis-so-lu-tion! Dis-so-lu-tion!” They accused the lawmakers of doing nothing for the people and demanded that the Congress be disbanded.

* THE BALTICS. President Bush formally recognized the independence of the Baltic states--Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania--and said the United States will immediately establish diplomatic relations with them. But he cautioned that Washington would consider similar declarations by the other secessionist Soviet republics only on a “case by case basis.” Baltic leaders were ecstatic over the U.S. announcement. Estonian President Arnold Ruutel said he greeted the news with “great happiness.” In neighboring Latvia, President Anatolijs Gorbunovs announced: “This makes our independence irreversible.”