Soviet Realignment Forged : Power-Sharing Deal; U.S. Recognizes Baltics : Union: Word of accord among Gorbachev, Yeltsin and leaders of nine other republics stuns Parliament. The sweeping rearrangement would override most central government institutions.

Tearing up the map of the Soviet empire, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the leaders of the Russian Federation and other unruly republics forged a new economic and military compact Monday that allows each to choose how to cooperate with the others or to not cooperate at all.

“This is the final liberation from totalitarianism!” exclaimed a lawmaker from the republic of Georgia, which has proclaimed itself independent from Moscow, as he took the floor at the emergency session of the Congress of People’s Deputies.

Convening at 10 a.m. in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, the 1,900 members of the nation’s top government body were stunned--some shocked--at word that Gorbachev, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin and leaders of nine other republics had moments earlier closed a deal on power- sharing. It, effectively, would liquidate their assembly and lead to a sweeping realignment of the Soviet political system.

“Our union is not only on the brink of collapse, it is in a state of collapse,” Sergei S. Alexeyev, chairman of the Constitutional Compliance Committee, said, urging Congress to approve the measure. “Since the putsch, society has been in a revolution. . . . The moment of truth has arrived: Let us be above personal and parochial interests!”

Last month’s bungled right-wing coup d’etat had discredited the Soviet government institutions, such as the Defense Ministry and KGB, that had been central props of Gorbachev’s rule. It also acted as a volatile catalyst on anti-Moscow sentiments in the outlying republics, eight of which declared independence during the putsch or afterward.

The coup also doomed Gorbachev’s campaign for a new union treaty to create “a strong center and strong republics.”

Now, breaking with the top-heavy centralization common under both the czars and Soviet Communists, Gorbachev has agreed to grant Soviet republics what appears to be the status of wholly independent nation states, with U.N. membership if they desire, and an economic common market and a security pact for defense.

To stave off the looming razval --or collapse--of the heavily interdependent Soviet Union, Gorbachev and the 10 republic leaders met until late Sunday, then returned to the Kremlin on Monday at about 8 a.m. to initial a final agreement.

The document, read out loud to the Congress two hours later by the stocky president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, allows each republic to “independently determine” its form of participation in a future “union of sovereign states.” But it urges all of them to immediately join an economic alliance--a step already recommended by Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The accord--immediately dubbed “10 plus One,” for the number of participating republics plus Gorbachev--overrides or neutralizes most central government institutions. Instead, it creates: an interim Council of Representatives with 20 envoys from each republic; a State Council made up of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the other republic chiefs, and an inter-republic committee to coordinate the economy.

Only a bare-bones plan has been worked out and published. But the proposal, as it stands, would allot to Gorbachev, 60, a mostly titular role, or largely the functions of a referee.

Fittingly, Gorbachev, the Soviet leader for the last 6 1/2 years, had opened previous sessions of the Congress from the chairman’s dais. But he sat Monday morning in the front row of the cavernous hall, listening to Nazarbayev. Yeltsin, now the most powerful politician in the land, sat in the cherry-red armchair to Gorbachev’s right.

The Gargantuan portrait of V.I. Lenin, the Communist Party revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union that had dominated the stage at past sessions of the Congress, was also gone, another sign of the fast-changing times.

“Gorbachev’s song is sung. Now he’ll have to dance to the flute of Yeltsin and Nazarbayev,” Col. Nikolai S. Petrushenko of the Soyuz faction told reporters in the lobby.

Other right-wingers were furious at having such a crucial issue as the effective dissolution of the Soviet Union thrust on them unexpectedly and a vote rammed through Parliament to boot to limit the session to three days.

“In matter of fact, the coup continues,” Deputy Viktor N. Kisilev said, protesting the cancellation of the Congress’ previous agenda so the power-sharing plan could be discussed.

Alexander M. Obolensky, a Leningrad engineer who was the sole person to run against Gorbachev for president in 1989, called on his fellow deputies to “stop treating the constitution like a whore” and moved that legislators consider tossing out Gorbachev instead.

“Considering that our president . . . permitted the hatching of a conspiracy among his closest allies against the constitutional order, that he is personally responsible for promoting and insistently supporting the vice president (Gennady I. Yanayev) who headed the conspiracy . . . I think we have the right to put on the agenda the issue of impeaching U.S.S.R. President M. S. Gorbachev,” Obolensky said.

Delegations from Russia and the Ukraine, the two most populous republics, rejected the idea of impeachment. Leningrad Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak, touted by progressives as a possible candidate to succeed Gorbachev, shrugged off such speculation, saying, “Let this cup pass from me.”

The proposal made to the Congress--essentially to commit collective institutional suicide--was sweetened by a proviso that the Parliament members will retain “people’s deputy” status for their full five-year term of office. That privilege gives them the right to free air travel, special waiting rooms in train stations and other benefits.

“Some people call what we are trying to do another coup,” a source close to Gorbachev commented. “Indeed, this attempt to get out of today’s quagmire invites the Congress to sign its own death warrant. We hope they will accept the offer, which does after all contain a ‘consolation prize.’ ”

After the shortest morning session in the history of the two-year-old Congress, deputies were bused to various locations to debate the plan announced by Nazarbayev. Yeltsin had previously expressed fears that the Communist conservatives who predominate in the Parliament might be able quite legally to vote the same rollbacks in reforms that the right-wing junta had pushed for.

But it took only about an hour for the Russian Federation leadership, meeting at Yeltsin’s “White House,” to whip 600 deputies into line. Sobchak later reported to the Congress that of the Russian bloc--about a third of all Congress members attending--only eight were against the plan.

Interviews with deputies, however, showed that many of the concepts behind “10 plus One” were fuzzy and badly understood. The seven-point document, for example, calls on the signatory republics to agree on a single armed forces and a “unified military-strategic space.”

“What does ‘unified strategic space’ mean? If you want to get a clear definition, you’d better ask the people who are using the word,” air force Gen. Pyotr I. Klimuk said.

Gorbachev’s top political adviser, Georgy K. Shakhnazarov, said the plan’s clauses on defense matters would prevent individual republics from getting hands-on control of a share of the Soviet strategic arsenal “to ensure that our nuclear power will never be used to threaten the peace.” The plan also pledges “radical reforms” of the armed forces, KGB and Interior Ministry.

The economy, and the amount of control each republic is called upon to cede for the common good, will become a decisive battleground; the plan calls for republics to join forces “within a free common economic space.”

“It is time to end the fight for the union treaty and quickly sign an economic agreement between the republics,” said Arkady Volsky, a Gorbachev ally and a top official on the economic crisis management committee created after the putsch. He specifically mentioned coordinating investment, finance and wage scales.

“If the republics start running away, the ruptured economic ties will result in colossal damage--worth of billions of rubles,” Volsky warned.

Stanislav S. Shatalin, formerly the economic adviser to Gorbachev and guiding light behind the abortive “500 Days” plan for a swift march to a market economy, has written the blueprint for a Soviet “Economic Community.” It, like the West European original, would permit member states to have their own currencies and be governed by institutions with a six-month rotating chairmanship.

Armenia’s president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, heartily endorsed Shatalin’s proposal, which officials from 11 other republics helped prepare.

Ter-Petrosyan also praised the points of the “10 plus One” plan that allows republics like Armenia to join world organizations like the United Nations--thus giving them the protection of international law--and the plan’s “a la carte” character that allows each republic to define its role in the new union, a feature that Gorbachev’s union treaty did not have.

The republics signing the agreement are the Slavic lands of Russia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia; the mostly Muslim republics of Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan and Turkmenistan, and Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. The third Caucasus republic, Georgia, took part in the talks but did not agree to the result, Nazarbayev reported.

“Right, Georgia hasn’t signed,” Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko commented. “But who is Georgia going to sell oranges and wine to? To the Russians! I don’t think the Italians need Georgian wine.”

He predicted Georgia and the other holdouts--Moldova and the three Baltics--will be pulled into the economic union eventually because other Soviet regions have been their markets and sources of supply.

But even Parliament members from the signing republics found faults in the plan concocted by Gorbachev and the republic leaders, presaging more debate when the Congress resumes today.

In particular, the Russians objected to the proposal to supplant the existing bicameral Supreme Soviet legislature with the “Chamber of Representatives” where each republic--from mighty Russia to relatively tiny Armenia--would have the same 20 votes.

According to Yeltsin’s counselor on security matters, Sergei B. Stankevich, Russia wants tighter, federal-like ties with an inner “core” of three other republics--the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Kazakhstan. But the Ukraine wants only the informal links of a confederation and has been suspicious of Yeltsin’s intentions.