In Search of a More Perfect Union : But will Russia dominate the new confederation?

The birth of a new nation is almost always disorderly and more often than not messy, as unfolding events in the Soviet Union continue to illustrate.

THE DECISION: At its emergency session in Moscow this week the Congress of People’s Deputies, the country’s top legislative body, had to be coaxed, urged, insulted and finally threatened with dissolution before it grudgingly approved the sweeping political changes that are intended within a few months to produce a new and voluntary Union of Sovereign States. The reasons for the Congress’ obvious lack of enthusiasm are clear. With its heavy load of conservatives, among them more than a handful of still true-believing communists, the Congress resisted approving actions that effectively liquidate those institutions that have provided so many in its ranks with power, status and the often opulent and deeply resented material benefits of the good life, Soviet-style. Only when a weary and exasperated President Mikhail S. Gorbachev finally warned “if we can’t agree on this, the Congress ceases its work” was the voting deadlock broken. It may have been a moment of personal triumph for Gorbachev, but it did not necessarily augur well for the future of free legislative debate in the polity now being created.

And what exactly did the Congress finally agree to? Broadly, it agreed to the historic and comprehensive transfer of effective authority from the central government to the Soviet republics--at least those of them that choose to associate with the new union. Right now it appears that 11 of the 15 republics are ready to join in a loose confederation that would give the republics a veto over national policy-making. (The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, forcibly attached to the Soviet Union in 1940, have proclaimed their independence and have no intention to look back. Moldova, with its Romanian-majority population, also seems determined to break away.) It is a dramatic measure of how completely power has shifted in the Soviet Union that each republic will be able to decide for itself how closely tied it will be to the new structure.

THE TRANSITION: A temporary administration is to serve in the interregnum. Decisions on foreign and domestic issues are to be made by a State Council composed of Gorbachev and the leaders of the participating republics. There will be a new parliament, to be convened Oct. 2, made up of members chosen by the republics. The critical area of economic management is to be handled by an inter-republican committee.

The really hard part--defining and devising the new union--comes next.

Fears are already being expressed that Russia, a transcontinental colossus accounting for half of the Soviet Union’s population and three-fourths of its landmass, will so dominate the new federation that the smaller republics will be left largely powerless. The concern about the big lording it over the small interestingly echoes some of the fears, jealousies and ambitions that attended the birth of the American republic. But more to the point it is deeply rooted in centuries of Russia’s unambiguously expansionist history. Boris N. Yeltsin, Russia’s president, suggests that domination is the farthest thing from his mind, an assurance that might carry greater credibility had he not maneuvered in the post-coup period to claim equal status with Gorbachev and so openly assert Russia’s ascendancy over the central government. All of which is only to suggest that the coming weeks of debate and discussion are going to be anything but smooth and easy. The most fundamental issues in politics--who gets what, where does the power go--have to be resolved, by a disparate community of republics that together readily recognize the virtues of creating a brave new world but are a long way from agreeing on how to go about doing so.