Russian Legislators End Yeltsin Emergency Edict : Unrest: Residents of Muslim Chechen-Ingush region celebrate decision by the federation’s Supreme Soviet.

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin suffered a blow to his authority Monday when the Russian legislature voted to cancel a state of emergency that he had imposed on the predominantly Muslim Chechen-Ingush region of his republic.

Lawmakers decided that in a place as explosive as Chechen-Ingushetia--a small autonomous enclave in the south, where Gen. Dzhokar Dudayev had illegitimately taken power--Yeltsin’s state of emergency could lead to mass bloodshed.

In Grozny, the Chechen capital, a crowd that has held vigil in a central square since Yeltsin issued the decree Friday celebrated the Russian legislature’s decision by firing guns into the air.

“This is a very wise decision and it will certainly relieve tension,” said Alexander Ivanov, director of the Chechen Parliament’s information center. “Thank God the Russian deputies realized that it is impossible to speak the language of power with these people. . . . To fulfill Yeltsin’s decree, they would have had to shoot all the people in the square.”

The Supreme Soviet, the Russian legislature, said Yeltsin was within his rights to impose the emergency measures but that enforcing them would be impossible. “It is necessary to continue attempts to resolve the situation (in the region), not by applying emergency measures but by political means,” the Supreme Soviet said in its decision.

But some lawmakers were concerned about the possibility of anarchy since other regions of the vast Russian Federation might conclude that they, too, could play Yeltsin against the legislature--and win.

“This can definitely be considered a blow to Yeltsin, although the Supreme Soviet tried to be as delicate as possible,” said Leonid B. Volkov, a member of the Russian legislature and its constitutional commission. “But it can turn out to be a blow not just to Yeltsin but to the whole Russian government, because now any region can think it can use the same forceful methods to get what it wants. It undermines the authority of the Russian government.”

Yeltsin spokesman Pavel I. Voshchanov disagreed. The legislature’s decision, he said, does not compromise the president’s authority, and he should not take offense at it.

“It shows that a normal democratic parliamentary process is developing here, whereby the Parliament can disagree with the president and the president can disagree with the Parliament,” Voshchanov said.

Voshchanov cautioned that Dudayev must not consider this a victory that gives him the right to follow his own political will, regardless of Russian law.

“Dudayev should seriously think about the possible consequences of his actions,” Voshchanov said. “He used his popularity to persuade his people to be ready to go into a civil war, and this would neither be in his interests nor the interests of his people.”

In place of the emergency measures, the Russian legislature decided to send a delegation to the area to try to reason with Dudayev, a 46-year-old retired general of the Soviet air force who took power in the mountainous region in early October. Later in the month, he held an election and received 90% of the vote. But Russian authorities have refused to recognize that election, calling it invalid before it took place.

Despite Moscow’s attempts to stop him, Dudayev is trying to establish a system of self-rule in the area, which was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the late 1850s.

The legislature’s decision Monday specified that travel into and out of the Chechen-Ingush region should be controlled to prevent the flow of arms. “We don’t want them to export their revolution,” Oleg G. Rumyantsyev, a lawmaker and close adviser to Yeltsin, said in a televised interview.

The situation in the region is still very tense, according to the Soviet news agency Tass, and in the three days since Yeltsin announced the state of emergency, Dudayev’s popularity has grown.

Although Yeltsin’s decree banned demonstrations, tens of thousands of people, many of them armed, had rallied constantly to show their support for Dudayev. Among the crowd were a “considerable” number of inmates from a penitentiary in Grozny, Chechen Interior Minister Ulmat Alsultanov said in a television address.

The prisoners escaped to help protect the freedom of the Chechen people, Alsultanov said, and if they return voluntarily to the penitentiary after the situation in the city calms down, their sentences may be commuted.