New Union Plan Divides Soviet Lawmakers : Reaction: Conservative deputy worries that Gorbachev’s proposal will tear the country apart. Moldovan representative says the action is overdue.

For Deputy Leonid Sukhov, a Russian taxi driver from Kharkov, Monday was a disastrous day at the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies.

In contrast, fellow Parliament member Mikhail Muntyan, an opera singer from Moldova, approved so heartily of the day’s action that he said it all should have been done years ago.

“I think another coup has taken place,” Sukhov said of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s surprise proposal to radically revamp the government, giving more freedom and weight to any of the 15 republics that choose to remain in the union and letting the rest go.

“We asked the people in March what state setup they prefer, and the majority voted to retain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” he said, referring to a nationwide referendum. “Whether the leaders like that or not, they should listen to the will of the people.”

Known as a conservative and a working man’s working man with a talent for plain-spoken but effective speeches, Sukhov said he feared that the Soviet Union would fall apart and people would suffer as a result.

“People tell me that they want a unified Soviet Union because their people are spread all across the country,” he said, citing voters’ worries that they will have problems visiting relatives and transporting goods across republic lines.

“I’m used to looking at things practically,” he said, “at how things happen in real life. And I think the struggle will not only not dwindle, it will grow, and people’s lives will get worse.”

Sukhov said Gorbachev’s willingness to break up the Soviet empire appalled him.

“I’m not a historian,” he said, “but I observe history, and I can see that never once, not in a single country, was there a leader who strove to reduce the statehood of his country and encourage its weakness. Yes, empires collapse, but this is the first time that it originated with the leader.”

“And how much blood has been spilled so this farce could be played out?” Sukhov asked.

Muntyan also had little good to say about Gorbachev, but coming from a republic that has voted for its independence, his criticism of the Soviet leader was from the opposite standpoint: He accused Gorbachev of dragging his feet on the reform of the republics’ relations.

“If all this had been proposed two years ago, it would have been so much easier,” the round-faced soloist said. “Gorbachev made a lot of mistakes. If he was going to begin perestroika, couldn’t he see what would come to pass today and do this two years ago? Then everyone would have signed, the Baltics and Moldova too, and everything would have been normal.”

Instead, 10 of the 15 Soviet republics have rebelled against Kremlin rule and declared their independence. Moldova, a largely agricultural republic bordering Romania, did so a week ago.

“The kind of union we used to have is impossible now,” said Muntyan, an ethnic Moldovan. “And I think every republic will be sovereign, but it will have to develop relations with the others.”

But, Muntyan added, political independence must not preclude economic union.

“We passed our declaration of independence, and then what?” he asked. “We’re still so closely connected. Our factories work on raw materials from Kazakhstan. . . . It’s just so clear, every republic should have its own leadership, its own policy--but the economics should be very closely tied.”

Muntyan said he also could not understand why Soviet legislators had not already created the form of parliament that Gorbachev is proposing now, in which each republic would have 20 representatives regardless of its size or population. For Moldova, one of the smallest of republics, the plan is naturally appealing.

“It has to be understood that equality is equality, not when the big brother has more and the little brother has less,” Muntyan said. “If there are 500 deputies from Russia and 50 from Moldova, it’s clear we can’t even peep.

“We’ve stopped being afraid of the older brother,” he added. “But we’d like--I’d like--that Russians in Moldova acted with some elementary respect. We respect them, but there are problems with elementary things like language. It’s like if I came to the United States and said: ‘Comrades, sirs, from now on you have to learn Russian because I don’t know English.’

“It was the stupid policy of the (Communist) party,” Muntyan said, “that everyone had to speak Russian and know Russian culture. I always had to sing in Russian too.”

But such ethnic questions, he said, should not stand in the way of working out new relations among the republics.