Rift Seen as High Official Quits Provisional Soviet Regime : Moscow: Silayev resigns as head of National Economy Committee amid controversy over how to divide national spoils among republics.

Russian Federation Prime Minister Ivan S. Silayev resigned Wednesday from one of the highest posts in the provisional Soviet government, exposing rifts within the leadership that has been charged with guiding the fracturing federation into a new post-Communist union.

The Tass news agency said Silayev will step down as chairman of the National Economy Committee on Monday. It made no mention of a successor.

At such a crucial juncture in Soviet history, with most republics demanding independence and the economy on the verge of collapse, Silayev’s departure will probably deepen domestic and international concern over the Soviet Union’s stability as it undergoes a dramatic transition.

Silayev, 60, will stay on as prime minister of the Russian Federation. Despite his resignation, he is expected to meet with visiting U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III today.

He appeared on the Soviet television news program “Vremya” after his surprise announcement but gave only cryptic replies when asked why he chose to leave after less than three weeks in office.

Silayev had been named to head the transitional committee on Aug. 24 after President Mikhail S. Gorbachev fired his Cabinet of Ministers for complicity in a coup attempt by hard-line Communists.

The choice of Silayev to chair the provisional government was probably influenced by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, who defiantly stared down the coup plotters and emerged from the crisis with considerable new powers. But Russia’s dominant role in directing the interim affairs of the troubled federation has heightened conflict among the republics and appears to have triggered Silayev’s resignation.

Besides disbanding the Soviet government and putting Silayev’s committee in charge of maintaining vital economic functions, Gorbachev resigned from the Communist Party in protest of its role in the failed putsch. He ordered all party property to be handed over to the Russian government.

How to divide the vast spoils among the republics that belonged to the Soviet Union appears to have become a major point of controversy among the interim leaders, especially in discussions about how to prevent famine and fuel shortages during the approaching winter.

According to news accounts, Silayev came under sharp attack when the economic committee took up the property distribution issue on Wednesday. The Russian Information Agency said Silayev resigned after “very stormy” debate.

Yuri Luzhkov, deputy mayor of Moscow and one of four vice chairmen on Silayev’s committee, accused the Russian Federation leadership of “unprecedented usurpation” of property that belonged to the Soviet Union, Tass said.

Silayev appears to have defended Yeltsin against the barrage of accusations and resisted calls from other committee members to free the newly acquired resources to subsidize food and other essentials.

With prices skyrocketing beyond some Soviet citizens’ ability to pay, “many people will possibly die of hunger,” Luzhkov said, according to Tass.

Silayev insisted during his brief TV appearance that such dire forecasts were exaggerated.

Aside from the economic committee, the Soviet Union now has only a provisional State Council, headed by Gorbachev, to hold the federation together long enough for republic leaders to decide whether to join a new Union of Sovereign States.

As preparations got under way for the trials of 14 men charged with treason after the coup, it was disclosed Wednesday that Gorbachev will be called to testify against those accused of trying to overthrow him. “Like any citizen of the country, President Mikhail Gorbachev must testify on the coup d’etat, “ Alexei Svostyanov, spokesman for the Russian Federation prosecutor’s office, told Tass.

No trial dates have been set for any of the seven surviving junta members or others charged with collaboration in the putsch. Tass announced that 10 of the 14 had entered pleas of innocent in pretrial proceedings.

Only one of the defendants has confessed to all the charges against him, the news agency said, without specifying which one. Three others have entered guilty pleas to some of the charges while contesting others. If convicted on the charge of high treason, the men could face execution by firing squad.

Tass also reported that one of the accused, former Speaker of the Soviet Parliament Anatoly I. Lukyanov, had fallen ill and has been transferred from his prison cell to a medical facility.

Defense lawyers and supporters of the accused coup plotters have embarked on an unprecedented campaign for public sympathy.

In an interview with the Literaturnaya Gazeta, Lukyanov’s daughter, Helen, claimed that on the day Gorbachev was taken prisoner, her father had denounced the putsch leaders as “adventurers.”

“If he is condemned, it will show that we are about to return to the 1930s,” she told the newspaper, alluding to the show trials conducted by dictator Josef Stalin.

Lukyanov’s lawyer, Genrikh Padva, was quoted by Literaturnaya Gazeta as saying his client “rejects all the accusations.”

The Moscow daily Komsomolskaya Pravda carried an interview with the wife of former Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov, one of the eight hard-line Communists who signed the emergency orders usurping Gorbachev’s power. Emma Yazova claimed her husband had no designs on dictatorship.

“I’ll never become Pinochet,” Yazova quoted her husband as assuring her once the junta took over, referring to Chile’s former military strongman, Augusto Pinochet, who seized presidential powers in a 1973 coup.

“To my mind, this was not a putsch at all, as a putsch is intended to seize power and my husband had power enough,” Yazova was quoted as saying. “He was the minister of defense, the highest rank for a serviceman, the marshal of the Soviet Union.”

Profile: Ivan S. Silayev

Born: 1930

Education: Kazan Aviation Institute

Career highlights: Joined Communist Party, 1959. Foreman, chief engineer, plant director in Gorky, 1954-74. Soviet deputy minister, first deputy minister for aircraft industry, 1974-80. Minister for aircraft industry, 1981-85. Joined Communist Party Central Committee, 1981. Headed government inquiry into Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 1986. Appointed Russian Federation prime minister, June, 1990. Appointed to high post in transitional government Aug. 24, 1991; resigned Sept. 11.

Quote: “Everything changes too fast in the times we are living through. I myself am completely different from the person I was in the ‘70s.”