Power Realignment Blocked by Defiant Soviet Lawmakers : Union: Congress members reject Gorbachev-Yeltsin proposal that would scrap Parliament. The debate will resume today.

A combative Soviet Congress, refusing to sign its own death warrant, rejected the power-realignment plan pushed on it Wednesday by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin.

It immediately was squeezed by a lobbying effort to make it reconsider.

“I have no intention of giving away--just like that--the powers that voters gave me,” Viktor N. Fominikh declared defiantly before turning down the proposals put before lawmakers. Enough of his colleagues agreed to bring the Soviet overhaul--the project of this country’s most powerful men--to a complete halt, temporarily anyway, on Wednesday.

This was to have been the third and final day of the Congress of People’s Deputies. Instead, it will convene again today. The two-year-old body, dominated by career bureaucrats and Communist Party functionaries, was created as the country’s Parliament, and Gorbachev, Yeltsin and leaders of nine other Soviet republics now want to scrap it.

In its place, Gorbachev and the others have proposed a bevy of interim institutions to catch up with the drastically altered political realities since the bungled right-wing bid to topple Gorbachev last month. In particular, they envision a new kind of Soviet Union--a “union of sovereign states,” as Gorbachev says--where each republic can choose the extent of its participation.

But the ire of many Congress members at having such an important issue rammed down their throats, with a decision demanded within three days, bubbled to the surface when they were handed a compromise cobbled together by Gorbachev, Yeltsin and other republic leaders. Their compromise sought to rally the necessary two-thirds majority in the 2,250-seat Parliament to support their government revamp plan.

After two unexpected adjournments, the Congress gathered at 5 p.m. in the same giant hall of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses where the Bolshoi Ballet sometimes dances, with Gorbachev still exhorting his colleagues to pass his plan. He evoked rueful laughter at one point when he told the lawmakers, “I need to ask your advice.”

“Give us the floor! Give us the floor!” angry shouts came back. Gorbachev was forced to agree to a full half-hour of debate, after the Congress shot down his attempt to restrain remarks by deputies to a total of 10 minutes.

Given the kind of parliamentary sleight of hand that often prevails in the Congress, Gorbachev and the deputies disagreed about the significance of the vote that ensued. But it was clear that the Soviet leader and Yeltsin, glowering silently on the dais beside him, did not get their desired results.

A resolution recognizing the “state sovereignty” of the constituent Soviet republics, requiring the new, free-form union and proposing collective agreements on economy and defense was accepted, 1,126 to 289, for “the basis for discussion,” usually the first step in the Soviet Parliament to final adoption.

But when confronted with a second bill that would create the country’s new executive and legislative branches--and in the process terminate the need for the Congress--the deputies voted 1,200 to 275, with more than 300 others pushing the “abstain” button or not casting ballots at all.

The electronic tally boards at the front of the hall flashed bright red: “Decision Not Adopted.”

Many people seemed uncertain as to what the vote now meant, especially because legislative rules committees had said Tuesday that the government reforms that Gorbachev and Yeltsin proposed changed the constitution and required a two-thirds majority--1,500 votes--of the entire Congress for final adoption.

But Gorbachev tried to persuade the deputies after the fact that, just as on the resolution they had considered a few moments before, they were only being asked to consider the measure before them as submitted. And for that a simple majority was enough.

“We are not adopting the law! We are only adopting it as a basis for the discussion!” he said.

“ Nyet! Nyet! “ came the shouts.

The Soviet president, whose own temper was apparent more than once during the afternoon session, finally caved in.

“OK, OK,” he said. “The law is still up in the air.”

Opposing it were: a multifaceted group of representatives of the country’s smaller ethnic groups who contend that their rights will no longer be adequately safeguarded; Ukrainians who wanted a jurist’s opinion first to decide whether the law is compatible with their republic’s declaration of sovereignty, and nostalgic conservatives aghast at the breakup of the Soviet monolith.

It is also highly likely that more than a few deputies, fed up with being used by Gorbachev and Yeltsin as little more than voting machines, cast “no” votes out of spite.

“Executive power is ordering around legislative power, and legislative power is putting up with it as though it needs it. People aren’t being allowed to speak, nothing is explained--this is some kind of nightmare,” said Sazhi Umalatova, a conservative Communist deputy.

Georgy S. Tarazevich, the chairman of the Soviet legislature’s committee on ethnic affairs and a Byelorussian, observed: “Everyone can see things are being unnecessarily rushed, with a heavy dose of emotion. A decent interval in the work of the Congress would have been of help.”

Perhaps agreeing, but with few other options, Gorbachev adjourned the Parliament until 10 this morning so members could caucus in their republic delegations and propose amendments to make the stalled law more acceptable.

As he announced the adjournment, Gorbachev was so miffed that, by mistake, he said he was terminating the Congress--for good.

After the Congress broke up, the Russian Federation delegation, about 600-strong and by far the largest of any republic, began meeting almost immediately in closed-door session in the hall where the Parliament had sat. Opponents of the plan for a power shift and the juridical breakup of the Soviet Union said they were being subjected to strong-arm tactics.

“Just look inside now: Yeltsin has assembled the Russian delegation and without registration, without proper procedure for a vote count, asks them to raise hands in favor of the controversial points of the draft law,” Deputy Alexander N. Kraiko of Moscow said. “And who is doing this? Our No. 1 democrat, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin!”

A group of more than 100 deputies demanded a return to the agenda set last week for the Congress by the Supreme Soviet, the smaller national legislature, and accused Gorbachev and the other republic leaders chairing the session of making them hostages of their “scenario.”

But supporters of the plans for a new Soviet Union countered that for the Congress to do nothing would be casting the country--already paralyzed by the collapse of government authority and worsening economic chaos--into even more dire straits.

“This is a very dangerous situation--we will be giving a trump card to the reactionaries,” Leningrad Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak cautioned. “If we do not come to an agreement at the Congress, they will gather in some other place and start their fight against democrats under the pretext of defending the constitution and legality. This would be a very good chance for a new putsch.”

To force the Parliament members’ hand, a group of Russian lawmakers made it known they plan to call for an emergency session next week of the Russian Federation’s own Congress, with an agenda including a declaration of independence by Russia, a measure that would make whatever decision the Congress takes today or later legally irrelevant.

“The Congress is the continuation of the putsch against Russia, organized by the center and those republics where the leadership has wanted to conserve Bolshevism,” Mikhail N. Poltoranin, the Russian information minister, charged. “The Congress has compromised itself by its lack of principle.”

It should be noted that in the Soviet government system, where institutions have traditionally served as tools for those in power and the sense of constitutionality has been intentionally kept fuzzy, even rejection by the Congress would not necessarily mean the end for the Gorbachev-Yeltsin blueprint.

At one point, Grigory I. Revenko, Gorbachev’s chief of staff, confided to reporters in the lobby of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses that, if the parliamentary session breaks up without passing the reforms, Gorbachev will go ahead and issue them as presidential decrees anyway.

Tass, the official news agency, offered one morsel that may indicate that the Congress will be dispersed if it does not do the bidding of Gorbachev and Yeltsin--the excellent buffet on the top floor of the Palace of Congresses has been allotted only enough smoked sausage, caviar, Narzan mineral water and other refreshments for a four-day sitting.

Political authority since the anti-Gorbachev coup has decisively passed from central government institutions, now discredited by their involvement in the plot, to the republics, so decisions taken inside the Kremlin palace will be seen as meaningless by some.

“Aren’t we exaggerating the importance of our Congress? For whatever the result of its work will be, the republics in any event will make agreements between themselves,” said Genrikh A. Borovik, a writer and chairman of the official Soviet Peace Committee.

But alongside such nonchalance, the progressive and radical deputies’ bloc, the Interregional Group, urged adoption of the political reform blueprint, saying inaction could endanger chances to prevent republics from sundering all common ties.

“In this situation, the deputies have no right to put their personal interests above that fragile consensus emerging among the republics,” said Galina Starovoitova, a Russian deputy elected from Armenia and the faction’s spokeswoman. “Opposition to this historical process may lead to a rupture in emerging civil concord.”

Yuri D. Chernichenko, a progressive deputy and the newly elected head of the Writers Union, lambasted the Congress as a “multifaced dictator” that has fallen far behind the times and should disappear into the dustbin of history. “These guys have nothing constructive in them anymore,” he said.

Under compromise proposals worked out in meetings between Congress members and leaders or envoys of the 10 republics that reached agreement with Gorbachev, the Parliament was asked to extend the life of the Supreme Soviet, the standing legislature, although its makeup and method of election will change.

To take smaller ethnic groups into consideration, a Russian-backed compromise now suggests giving Russia 45 seats in a chamber of the bicameral legislature, while all other republics would have 20. The added seats for Russia would be filled by Bashkirs, Buryats and representatives of other minorities, Russian deputies explained. But they would provide those groups with little guarantee of an impact on the nation’s political life, since Russia, like the other republics, would cast only a single vote in the chamber, the Soviet (or Council) of the Republics.

For deputies like Umalatova, a Chechen who now serves in the Supreme Soviet, that system is an unacceptable downgrading of the smaller ethnic groups’ present quotas in the legislature. “Yeltsin wants to take the autonomous republics and turn them into mere Russian provinces, like a czar,” she charged.

The proposal also abolishes the post of vice president, a job held only once and filled by the Congress last December with Gennady I. Yanayev. He became one of the members of the State Emergency Committee that unsuccessfully tried to oust Gorbachev last month.

If the Soviet president were incapacitated, the State Council--a collegial leadership group that would decide key issues in foreign and domestic affairs and whose members would include Gorbachev and leaders of individual republics--would elect one of its own to temporarily take over the job.

To prevent a repetition of the constitutional pretext for last month’s coup d’etat, a president replaced for health reasons would be examined first by a medical committee appointed by the Soviet legislature; lawmakers would have to formally approve the acting president within three days.

In another vote, the Congress approved the firing of Yanayev as vice president and of Anatoly I. Lukyanov as speaker of the Supreme Soviet. Both have been arrested for their involvement in the plot against Gorbachev, and Yanayev has been charged with treason, a crime that can carry the death penalty.

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Showdown in the Kremlin

The Scene: The parliamentary maneuvers in the Congress of People’s Deputies centered on two measures to reshape the country into a new association of sovereign republics. On one measure, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev won a procedural victory only to have that success neutralized by deputies’ actions on the next. Here’s a look at the measures and what happened to them:

The Resolution: The first measure was a four-page document that fixes the parameters of the new union. Under its terms, each republic will be able to define its role in the future association that would replace the present Soviet Union. The document also calls for economic agreement and accord on collective security among the Soviet republics. That blueprint received preliminary approval by the Congress in a 1,126 to 289 vote.

Comment: The deputies’ vote simply committed them to consider the resolution as submitted for further discussion. In the Soviet system, this is almost always a prelude to approval. In many Western systems, a measure is fully discussed, possibly amended, then voted up or down. The still emerging Soviet democratic system works differently: a proposal is first accepted in principal, then amended.

The Law: After a seeming victory on the resolution, Gorbachev pressed the deputies to vote on a law transforming the architecture of Soviet politics. This law would create a State Council, made up of Gorbachev and the republic leaders, to settle key issues of internal and foreign policy while a new treaty among the republics is concluded. It would set up an interim, Inter-Republic Economic Committee to run the country in lieu of the dissolved Cabinet of Ministers. The deputies voted 1,200 in favor, 275 against, 190 abstaining and 139 not voting on this law. But that apparent approval created problems.

Comment: After the vote, Gorbachev argued that the law, like the resolution the deputies had voted on, was simply to serve as the basis for further discussion, meaning that only a simple majority of the deputies present needed to approve it. But other Parliament members noted that the measure was a constitutional change requiring approval by two-thirds of the 2,250-member Parliament (1,500 votes) under Soviet law. In the clamor, it became clear that the law could not pass as written. The Congress was adjourned so deputies could meet in delegations by republics. They plan to offer amendments to the failed bill.

Latest Developments

* POLITICAL BATTLE: President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s plan to revamp the Soviet government and transfer most power to the republics ran into stiff opposition in the Congress of People’s Deputies. Although preliminary approval was given to the resolution, Gorbachev failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to implement the changes.

* BAKER’S VISIT: Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced that he will visit Moscow next week. Among the items he intends to discuss are economic reform and humanitarian needs in the Soviet Union as well as the four disputed Kuril Islands, which the Soviets seized after World War II and which Japan is trying to reclaim.

* MISSING SWEDISH HERO: KGB chief Vadim V. Bakatin gave Sweden five secret documents on the case of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but they reportedly shed no new light on his fate. Wallenberg disappeared in the hands of the Red Army during the last days of World War II after saving thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps.

* MOLDOVA MOVES AHEAD: President Mircea Snegur issued four decrees including one requesting the “unconditional withdrawal of Soviet army troops” and another announcing the creation of Moldova’s own armed forces. Meanwhile, ethnic Ukrainians blocked the main rail connections in eastern Moldova, demanding the release of Igor Smirnov, the leader of the self-proclaimed Trans-Dniester Republic. The Ukrainians oppose Moldova’s independence bid.

Source: Times Wire Services