NEWS ANALYSIS : Yeltsin’s Power Play Envisions a Brash Goliath

As power grabs go, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin’s proposal for a Slavic commonwealth to replace the Soviet Union was characteristically bold--an ultimatum to the other Soviet republics to accept Russian leadership or make their own way in the world.

Yeltsin was equally tough Monday with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, telling him to abandon his dreams of creating a new union out of the ruins of the Soviet Union, a union that Gorbachev sought to lead. Gorbachev might stay as commonwealth president, but on Yeltsin’s terms.

And only somewhat more politely was the West assured by Yeltsin that this new creature, the “Commonwealth of Independent States,” would assume all the international obligations of the old Soviet Union, including responsible control of its huge nuclear arsenal.

If Yeltsin has his way, this new commonwealth should quickly grow into a brash Goliath, determined to correct the errors of seven decades of socialism, giving expression to resurgent Russian nationalism, accustomed to swinging its weight and demanding respect from all quarters.

A state, in other words, that would be led by the Russian Federation and be much like Yeltsin himself.

Yeltsin’s bid for power is perhaps as breathtaking as any modern leader has attempted, short of going to war. The drama is heightened both by what is at stake in the disintegration and restructuring of the Soviet Union and by the uncertainty that Yeltsin will succeed where Gorbachev failed.

The basis of Yeltsin’s proposed commonwealth is a broadly worded affirmation of each member’s right to do as it wishes within its borders and an obligation only to coordinate defense and foreign policies.

Nothing is clear beyond that.

As other republics bid to join this commonwealth, its three Slavic founders--Russia, Ukraine and Belarus--will likely try to accommodate their concerns and aspirations; with those negotiations, the new state will begin to take shape.

But Yeltsin’s Russian Federation, the largest of the Soviet republics, controls most of the Soviet Union’s wealth--its natural resources, its industry, its scientific and technical talent. And that puts it in effective control of the commonwealth.

Other republics may have ideas on government policies, economic development or other programs. But without money from Russia, they have limited prospects of success.

This is what Yeltsin has wanted through the long negotiations on whether the Soviet republics would form a “federal state,” a “confederative state” or perhaps a “confederation.” Again and again, Yeltsin objected to constitutional formulas creating a strong central government or taxing Russia to finance benefits for poorer republics.

Yeltsin’s approach unexpectedly also suited Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk, elected Dec. 1 during a referendum in which Ukrainians voted, 9-1, for independence. The commonwealth outlined at weekend talks with Yeltsin assures Ukraine of its political freedom but retains for it vital economic links with Russia.

Kravchuk even won Yeltsin’s agreement for his suggestion that the new union be called a “commonwealth,” a concept Kravchuk had put forward during his election campaign and raised again last week.

That the Soviet Union was dying as a state has been clear for months; political cohesion was disappearing day by day, and the economy was simply disintegrating. With declarations of independence from all but two of its 15 former republics, the Soviet Union had become a geopolitical fiction. Much of the political struggle in the Soviet Union in recent months, consequently, has been over the shape of the successor state. This is a turning point in modern history, for this is the Soviet Union, the first Communist state and a fashioner of the 20th Century, that is now in transition.

The stakes, moreover, are huge, since the Soviet Union spans a sixth of the Earth’s land mass, stretching from the Baltic and Black Seas to the Pacific Ocean, with a population approaching 300 million. Its natural resources are unrivaled, its potential as a free-market economy immense. Even diminished internationally, it will remain a great power with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Gorbachev wanted a strong central government to remain at the head of a new federation, even as the republics gained in autonomy; the Soviet Union’s integrated economy and its world position required this, he had argued with great passion through the spring and summer.

The Soviet president, in fact, had won his way and was about to lead most of the republic presidents in signing a new Union Treaty, replacing the 1922 accord that formed the Soviet Union, when Communist Party hard-liners, as afraid of Gorbachev’s abandonment of communism and their loss of power as political and economic decentralization, mounted a coup on Aug. 18.

When the coup collapsed after three days, thwarted by popular resistance led by Yeltsin, the political ground had shifted decisively. Republic leaders had seen the danger of a strong center and wanted further decentralization, what a new draft of the Union Treaty called a “confederative state.”

But Yeltsin objected to the “Union of Sovereign States” proposed by Gorbachev.

This proposal still left too much power in the hands of the central government, Yeltsin contended, and it would again slow the transformation of the country’s state-owned and centrally planned economy into a system based on market forces and entrepreneurship. He had already begun to implement radical reforms, using the economic weight of Russia to push ahead.

Any central government, Yeltsin also argued, would siphon off the resources of his republic for projects that it did not wish to finance. Although Yeltsin’s language was oblique, his meaning was clear: Russia would no longer subsidize the poorer republics of Soviet Central Asia; it was no longer willing to bear those burdens of empire.

Under the banners of socialism and “internationalism,” the Soviet Union had united European peoples with those of Central Asia, the Polar North and the Levant. But with communism’s collapse and nationalism the new ideology, it was clearly every nation for itself, and Yeltsin was increasingly pursuing a “Russia first” policy.

And here Gorbachev’s efforts foundered last month--again as the Union Treaty was about to be signed.

Yeltsin demanded a “confederation” that further enhanced the powers of the republics, diminished those of the central government and allowed Russia to retain its wealth. The Russian president seized upon Ukraine’s refusal to join a “confederative state” to justify his own retreat.

Without Ukraine, Russia would bear an even heavier costs in subsidizing Central Asia; and the orientation of the new union would be eastward. This was politically unbearable for a people who still speak of the “Tatar yoke” of Mongolian rule more than 500 years ago as if it were only a generation or so ago.

Yeltsin had been in the ascendancy since the collapse of the conservative coup in August, and Gorbachev’s writ did not extend much beyond the walls of the Kremlin.

“The once and future president,” one of Gorbachev’s top aides called him last month, referring to his present lack of power and his hopes to restore it in the future. Another commented a few days ago, however: “He is near exhaustion.”

For Yeltsin, increasingly the creator of post-Soviet politics in Moscow, this was the opening he needed for his boldest gambit--an attempt to create a modern Russia, and those who would follow, in his own image.

Parks is The Times’ Moscow bureau chief.