Russia Signs Pact With 18 of Its 20 Republics

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and 18 of the 20 republics within Russia signed a federation treaty on Tuesday in a momentous attempt to bind the vast, multi-ethnic country together and guard against a Soviet-style breakup.

“Today we can tell our fellow citizens, our peoples who have lived together for centuries, and the world community that Russia was, is and will be united,” Yeltsin said during a ceremony at the Kremlin’s elaborate St. George Hall.

“By signing the federation treaty, we each seal the will of our peoples to preserve Russia, its spiritual treasure, its unique place in the world community,” he said. “Decades of violence and tyranny have not separated our people nor exterminated their desire to live in a unified country.”

But there were two exceptions. Notably absent were representatives of Tatarstan and Chechen-Ingushetia, the two republics that refused to sign. Chechen-Ingushetia is ruled by a military strongman who seems determined to secede from Russia, and Tatarstan voted for self-rule without secession in a recent general referendum.

The signing ceremony was televised live and lasted more than an hour. A thick book was passed around an enormous horseshoe-shaped table as representatives of the executive and legislative branches of the 18 republics and of all 68 of the regions that make up Russia signed the treaty.

The treaty is a major achievement for Yeltsin, because it will probably prevent him from suffering the fate of former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who resigned in December after presiding over the disintegration of the empire.

Yeltsin’s success in keeping most of Russia together contrasts sharply with the failure of Russia and 10 other former Soviet republics to make their new alliance, the Commonwealth of Independent States, into a cohesive bloc--politically, militarily or economically. Increasingly, Commonwealth meetings sound like a divorce court and not a new type of coalition.

The Russian Federation’s pact, in giving more authority to local governments, is designed to avoid secessions, ease tensions between various ethnic groups in Russia and minimize disputes between Moscow and Russia’s provinces.

“The treaty . . . will put an end to the domination of the so-called Moscow bureaucracy,” Yeltsin said. “At the same time, it will protect Russia from chaos, anarchy and the raging of selfish provincialism.”

The treaty is expected to be ratified by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Russian Parliament, during a session next week and then become part of a new Russian constitution.

Ruslan Khasbulatov, chairman of the Russian Parliament, stressed the historic importance of the document, which will help to establish a structure for the new Russian state.

Russia traces its statehood back more than 1,000 years, but during the Soviet period, Russia had only a pro forma state structure that was entirely subordinate to the Soviet government.

“All of those who signed this treaty today are participants in an exceptionally serious event, which will undoubtedly end up in the pages of the history of our motherland,” Khasbulatov said, tears of emotion brimming in his eyes. “And considering that the Russian Federation is one of the most important parts of world civilization . . . this event has global significance.”

In pushing hard for a new federation treaty as the basis for a post-Communist state, Yeltsin appeared to be trying to avoid Gorbachev’s fate. Gorbachev directed most of his energy during his last year in office to persuading the leaders of Soviet republics to preserve a single state by signing a union treaty based on a federative system. But his attempts came too late to save the union.

Yeltsin, by contrast, has pushed his federation treaty through relatively early in attempt to keep Russia together.

He was foiled only by the oil-rich republic of Tatarstan, which held a referendum on self-rule March 21 and wants a separate treaty with Russia, and Chechen-Ingushetia, a mountainous region in southern Russia.

A third republic, Bashkortostan, had wavered but in the end signed up.

In Tatarstan, a top parliamentary official said that representatives of his republic are in Moscow trying to negotiate a separate treaty with Russian leaders.

“We are not losing anything by not signing the federation treaty today,” said Nazib Bakhirov, the chief of the Tatarstan Parliament presidium’s secretariat. “We are basing our policy on the results of the referendum and the sovereignty declaration. The voice of the people cannot be ignored.”

At a news conference earlier in the day, Ramazan Abdulatipov, the chairman of the Nationalities Council of the Russian Supreme Soviet, or legislature, told a correspondent from Bashkortostan that Russia will not consider signing a bilateral treaty with one of its republics.

“You can sign a bilateral treaty with Turkey if you like but not with Russia, because for you Russia is not a foreign power,” Abdulatipov said.

Abdulatipov also stressed that those republics that do not sign will quickly find that they have become second-class members of the Russian Federation.

In Chechen-Ingushetia, the signing of the federation treaty was overshadowed by local problems. Forces trying to overthrow Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev seized the local television and radio broadcast centers in Grozny, the region’s capital, Tuesday morning, according to a duty officer at the local Interior Ministry who refused to give his name.

By 7 p.m. loyalist guards had stormed the broadcast centers with armored vehicles and hand grenades and reclaimed them for Dudayev, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. A national guard officer told Itar-Tass that five of his men had been killed in the fighting and that at least twice that many people on the other side had died.

Dudayev imposed a state of emergency in the republic to solidify his rule.

The festering dispute between Chechen-Ingushetia and Moscow has been a litmus test of Yeltsin’s reaction to ethnic separatism. Initially, he tried to use military force to make the rebel republic toe the line. But he quickly reversed his decision and for months has taken a passive approach.