3 Yeltsin Aides Sample U.S. Democracy

Two weeks ago, they spent three days and nights with a defiant Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin in Russia’s White House, putting their lives on the line in a showdown with Soviet coup masters.

Now, with the coup smashed and Yeltsin the emerging leader of a transformed nation, the three Russian legislators visited the Washington White House and Capitol Hill on Wednesday to seek advice on how to run a democratic, federal system of government.

“They are serious people who were with Yeltsin and would have been killed if the putsch had gone through,” said James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress and an expert on Russian history who was in Moscow during the coup.

But members of the delegation were looking to the future, not glorying in the past, as they discussed the enormous task of putting Russia on a new road that they hope would lead to economic progress under democratic rule.

“They presented a picture of wanting to build a society all over again,” marveled Billington.

Yevgeny Ambartsumov, deputy chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Relations of the Russian Parliament, said his delegation is eager to establish formal ties with the U.S. Congress and to seek American aid in reorganizing Russian economic and political life.

“Russia has become the center for regrouping all the democratic forces in the (Soviet) Union,” Ambartsumov said in an interview. “We are against uncontrolled doses of foreign aid to the central government but we would like help on concrete projects to develop the country.”

Projects to aid in a transition to family farms, to reorganize the distribution system and to convert defense plants into factories producing civilian goods were listed by Ambartsumov as examples of possible U.S. support for Russia in the near future. There may be a need for emergency food aid this winter, especially in Siberia and the Urals region, he added.

The delegation also included Sergei Filatov, secretary of the Presidium of the Russian Federation Parliament, and Nina Polikarpova, chief specialist of the Department of Interparliamentary Relations.

They began Wednesday with a breakfast conference at the White House with Ed Hewett, special assistant to President Bush for European and Soviet Affairs. Their meeting with Billington focused on an information system for the Russian Parliament, possibly along the lines of the Congressional Research Service that assists members of the Senate and House.

“They realize more than we have in this country that legislators must have access to knowledge in order to legislate,” Billington said. “I hope we’ll be able to help them in some way.”

Later, the Russians met with House Majority Whip David H. Bonior (D-Mich.), the ranking congressional leader who was in the capital. Bonior generally agreed with their proposal to begin a program of exchanges between the Russian Parliament and Congress, Ambartsumov said afterward.

Asked whether there is danger of another coup in the fast-changing Soviet Union, Ambartsumov replied: “I don’t think a coup could be repeated in the same form. The generals are demoralized. The (Communist) party apparatus is in splinters.

“But some dark forces could regroup and exploit the potential food difficulties and could organized another coup against the new-born Russian democracy.”