Delegates Sit on Hands as Gorbachev Speaks : Soviet Union: Legislators representing only 7 of the republics listlessly hear another call for change.

On Monday morning, the assorted ailments of the Soviet body politic went on display in a room inside the Kremlin:

The country’s new legislature was summoned to work, but only the Russian Federation and six other republics sent delegations empowered to act.

The Supreme Soviet’s former chairman, a law school chum of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, couldn’t attend. Anatoly I. Lukyanov has been imprisoned on charges of treason in the bungled August coup d’etat.

Gorbachev took the floor and spoke for nearly half an hour. There was no applause.

And that was how the first day went at the institution Gorbachev said should ensure “the succession of power” as the old Soviet Union self-destructs and its republics consider re-establishing links on a voluntary basis.

In his speech to the Supreme Soviet, Gorbachev advocated a formal political treaty among the 12 remaining republics, emergency measures to ward off winter shortages of food, heat and power, and rapid action to arrest the dizzying drop in the buying power of the ruble.

He stressed the need for a single, unified military and threatened “constitutional measures” against republics that nationalize armed forces property on their territory. An Azerbaijani delegate called such words a “direct threat” against his republic, which has claimed Soviet army property there as its own.

But in the present environment, did Gorbachev’s umpteenth call for prompt economic and political changes have any significance? And with republics asserting their right to run their own affairs, up to and including independence, is the Supreme Soviet, in its new version, really “supreme”?

Yuri D. Chernichenko, a Moscow writer, was one who thinks the national legislature’s time has passed, given the centrifugal forces tearing at the Soviet Union. Asked what sort of laws he and his fellow deputies might discuss in the coming days, he wisecracked: “On the sandwiches in our snack bar. . . . As for the more serious stuff, I’m not sure.”

Gorbachev, whose speech seemed as lackluster as his muddy red tie, was listened to politely, but some deputies made it clear they felt free to ignore him. “This was not a program, these were merely proposals,” said Multalim A. Khusanbayev, a lawmaker from Tadzhikistan.

The bicameral legislature, the political progeny of the August putsch and its consequences, has been remodeled to give weight to the governments of the increasingly assertive republics, now allowed to directly name their delegations.

The row of flags behind the podium from which Gorbachev spoke highlighted the new balance of power. For the first time in the chamber, there could be seen: the czarist tricolor, once again the official Russian Federation flag; the white-red-white banner of Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), and the new flag of Uzbekistan, complete with a Muslim crescent, as well as the red banners of four other predominantly Islamic Central Asian lands that sent delegations--Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan and Kyrgyzstan (formerly Kirghizia).

Moldova and Azerbaijan sent only observers. Armenia, Georgia and--most worrisome for proponents of a reformed Soviet Union--the Ukraine sent nobody. A legislature that should have had more than 400 members had only 224, many newcomers.

The absence of the Ukraine, the biggest, most populous and richest republic after Russia, highlighted better than anything else the Supreme Soviet’s uncertain future. Trying to pass nationwide laws without the Ukraine is “like trying to run a race on one leg,” Chernichenko said.

As the legislature ended its inaugural session in the Supreme Soviet Presidium building that lasted less than an hour, Gorbachev told reporters he is certain the Ukraine eventually will take part.

The Ukraine objects to what it views as a recentralization of power, generally to the benefit of Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin and Russia; last Friday, the Ukraine refused to sign an agreement binding the remaining republics in an economic union. In general, Ukrainian leaders are putting off major political decisions until a Dec. 1 republic-wide presidential election.

Gorbachev told lawmakers that he and the leaders of the republics that sit with him on the State Council, recognizing the Ukraine’s great significance, had appealed to its legislators to join in the process of drafting a new political compact among the republics.

He said he hopes that a text for the proposed treaty can be published for nationwide discussion by mid-November, since, as long as the republics do not decide what sort of union they will establish, “any (economic) programs will remain wishful thinking.”

To jump start the Soviet economy, he said, “hard measures, including unpopular ones,” are needed. He proposed a package including land reform, freeing prices, government support for entrepreneurs and a “decisive breakthrough” to a market economy.

Because Lukyanov has been stripped of his chairman’s job for alleged complicity in the August putsch, Asret G. Urusov, the Supreme Soviet’s oldest member, was asked to take the chair.

The Supreme Soviet’s two chambers met separately in the afternoon to begin deciding procedural matters. In a footnote for future texts on Kremlinology, Western journalists were admitted for the first time to the opulent, marble-floored hall where the now-dissolved Communist Party Central Committee used to meet for its plenary sessions.