Yeltsin Winning the Army Over : Soviet Union: Dispirited Gorbachev fails in bid for top commanders’ loyalty. The Russian president promises a unified command and 90% pay raises.

Decisively defeating Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Soviet armed forces, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin on Wednesday won top military commanders over to his vision of a post-Soviet commonwealth, sources said.

Gorbachev, who made an emotional plea Tuesday to the officers for maintaining some vestiges of the unitary Soviet state, met with a debacle, according to the military sources.

“The army is on the side of the people, and the people have elected President Yeltsin,” Gennady E. Burbulis, the Russian leader’s chief adviser, said triumphantly after Yeltsin addressed the Soviet military brass Wednesday.

The different receptions awarded the presidents at the gathering of 500 commanders of divisions, army corps and military districts and headquarters officers was a crucial setback in Gorbachev’s bid to preserve both his job and the Soviet Union. They both would perish under Yeltsin’s Commonwealth of Independent States, the Slavic alliance formed over the weekend by the Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine to supersede the crumbling Soviet Union.

Officers who attended both closed-door sessions at Defense Ministry headquarters said Gorbachev, now fighting for his political life, seemed worn out and dispirited. He was even given a public dressing-down for allegedly trying to shatter unity in the ranks.

“Gorbachev didn’t say anything important--he was just moving his lips, as we say,” one Defense Ministry staff officer said. “He came on with his usual wind, looking miserable in the process. He didn’t demand anything, because he knows he is now just a figurehead.”

In stark contrast, Yeltsin arrived at Arbat Square in his Zil limousine at 11 a.m. Wednesday to meet the commanders. The Russian Federation leader then crisply repeated his pledge to raise all military salaries by 90% as of Jan. 1, participants said.

He reassured jumpy admirals and generals that the commonwealth he plans will preserve a “unified military-strategic space,” which they say is absolutely necessary if Russia and other republics are to be reliably defended in an age of Stealth aircraft and ICBMs.

“Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) showed that he understands that, if there is one currency space, one economic space, there has to be one defense space,” said one Defense Ministry officer.

Some meeting participants said Yeltsin’s speech did not answer all of their concerns. But Lt. Gen. Valery Manilov, the Defense Ministry’s chief spokesman, had only praise after hearing Yeltsin out. The plan for a commonwealth offers a “constructive way out of the current dead-end situation . . . toward the creation of a defense alliance of the independence states, a treaty on collective security and unified central command and control,” Manilov said.

Yeltsin apparently did not say how “unified central command” could be reconciled with the plans of independent states like Ukraine to field their own armed forces. That issue is also left unclear in the documents signed by Russia, Ukraine and Belarus last Sunday, when they formed the commonwealth.

In the present turmoil of Soviet politics, economic collapse and ethnic unrest, there has been great uncertainty about the intentions of the military, whose 3.7 million members belong to a central, if perhaps unreliable, pillar of Soviet government.

In August, then-Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov was a member of the committee that unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Gorbachev. Lately, there has been a surge of rumors that top-ranking officers might again be plotting something--speculation fueled by Gorbachev’s sudden sacking of the chief of staff, Gen. Victor Lobov, last Saturday.

A clamor is also coming from the barracks and officers’ clubs that living conditions for members of the military and their dependents have become intolerable, a worrisome sign that the loyalty of the armed forces cannot be taken for granted.

But as he spoke to the generals and admirals, Yeltsin, whose plea to soldiers in August not to obey the junta was heeded by the vast majority, said he is confident the army will not act against the people, the Russian Information Agency said.

“His chief goal was to calm the military down, to give them a lot of promises and to try and isolate them from taking part in any sudden turn of events,” the Defense Ministry staff officer said. “He didn’t call for any confrontation, didn’t ask them not to support Gorbachev. He even mentioned the possibility of a Gorbachev role (in the commonwealth).”

As for Gorbachev, he showed up unexpectedly on Tuesday, interrupting a discussion chaired by Defense Minister Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov on military preparedness, said Maj. Gen. Alexander V. Tsalko, deputy chairman of the Russian government’s committee on military reform.

“At the prime of his power, Gorbachev didn’t have much time for the military,” the Defense Ministry officer said. “But today, when his armchair has become shaky under him, here he comes.”

Gorbachev reportedly admitted he had paid insufficient attention to the military but told the officers that they have common interests, since a united army cannot exist without a single and united country.

According to the Interfax News Agency, Gorbachev specifically sought support for his call for a referendum and an emergency session of the Soviet Parliament to judge the legality of Yeltsin’s new commonwealth.

“The passionate call from the president of the U.S.S.R. did not make much of an impression on the audience,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta said. “It seems the army will not support him. His time has come and gone.”

Prominent military reformers agreed that the army as a whole will be deaf to Gorbachev’s pleas.

“I think he will try to use the army for his own goals, but this is to no avail,” said Maj. Gen. Nikita A. Chaldymov, a member of the Defense Ministry committee charged with dismantling Communist Party cells in the military.

The official Soviet version of events, repeated by state-run television news on Wednesday night, is that, despite his plummeting political authority, Gorbachev remains in charge of the Kremlin’s nuclear arsenal, the world’s biggest.

But there has been much conflicting information, including the supposed intention of the commonwealth’s leaders to set up a “three-button” system giving them, and not Gorbachev, joint command of the hydrogen bombs and other nuclear arms on their territory.

The Defense Ministry officer said it is indisputable that Gorbachev “is still nominally in charge of the army.” But, he said, the erosion of his power now seems to have led to a collegial command of three members--Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Shaposhnikov, the defense minister.

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