Russia’s Split Democrats Search for Unity : Congress: Yeltsin meets with some factions to spur creation of a coalition backing his reforms. A conservative onslaught is expected.

Commanding attention in his cassock and pectoral cross, Father Gleb P. Yakunin on Saturday lamented the sad, divided state of the “democrats,” those Russians who once bravely presented a unified front to the Communist bosses.

“By a miracle of God,” the Orthodox priest and Russian legislator said, tyranny backed by tanks was vanquished in Moscow’s streets last summer. But since then, Yakunin said, a “very strange evolution” has occurred.

Some Radical Democrats have now vowed to go over to the forces opposed to President Boris N. Yeltsin at the Congress of People’s Deputies, which convenes Monday, the clergyman noted.

Some Christian Democrats and Constitutional Democrats, erstwhile progressives, have taken a step to the right and now want Russia’s pro-market government thrown out.

Yakunin could have mentioned other rifts dividing the ranks of the politicians and activists whom Russians call the demokraty , including a personality-fueled conflict over rival suggestions for a constitution and resentment, even contempt, that some feel for members of Yeltsin’s powerful inner circle.

“We are very worried that the Congress will turn into a dead end,” Yakunin, who is one of its members, told more than 1,000 delegates from various pro-reform groups across Russia who gathered at the House of Filmmakers here to try to restore the unified front of old. “Maybe if things do run into a dead end, we should invite the miners to come. . . .”

Expecting nothing less than a full-scale conservative onslaught at the Congress, elected in 1990 when the Soviet Communist Party was the only legal party, Yeltsin huddled at the Kremlin with loyal Radical Democrats, members of Democratic Russia and other factions to spur the creation of a parliamentary coalition backing reform.

Moscow legislator Anatoly Y. Shabad said the coalition will support the main thrust of government policy at the Congress and rebuff attempts to limit Yeltsin’s power, Interfax news agency reported.

In a tit-for-tat bargain, Shabad said the coalition should be awarded a say in Yeltsin’s major government appointments, to create a “sturdy governing platform.”

The coalition, Yeltsin’s first attempt to ensure himself a reliable legislative majority, should be formally constituted at a caucus tonight, Interfax said.

As the Congress approaches, Yeltsin has moved in other ways to rally back to his side elements that have fallen out because of personality clashes, differences over policy and political rivalries, or that are just upset at the social pain caused by economic reforms initiated by the government Jan. 2.

Today, Yeltsin will address members of more than a dozen pro-reform parties and movements assembled at Moscow’s Rossiya theater to “attract public attention to the key issue--the fate of the Russian multinational state,” the daily newspaper Izvestia said.

The reception given Yeltsin will be a crucial barometer of his continuing ability to function, as he did in the past, as a rallying point for broad and inherently disparate political forces, thus muting mounting criticism of his policies by progressives and liberals.

Government leaders have also reportedly been meeting with representatives of Russia’s nascent business community to win their lobbying support at the Congress in exchange for some moderation of economic policy.

In an eloquent expression of its flexibility, the government agreed with the Russian Central Bank on Friday to allocate 200 billion rubles (about $2 billion at free market exchange rates) to loosen credit to capital-starved enterprises and finance a rapid increase in consumer goods production.

In the days before Parliament meets, Yeltsin has also relieved some of his top assistants--men such as Yegor T. Gaidar, Gennady E. Burbulis and Sergei M. Shakhrai--of some of the top government posts they held. In the latest such move Saturday, Alexander Shokhin was removed as minister of labor and employment but will continue as a deputy prime minister.

The president’s actions seem intended to get his aides out of the line of fire before the Congress opens. “. . . Yeltsin has secured the government practically to the full from a possible blow from people’s deputies,” commented the well-connected newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Gaidar, who surrendered his post as finance minister but remains first deputy prime minister, said in a newspaper interview that Yeltsin will hang tough at the Congress and defend his five-month-old government, since replacing it would “paralyze the management of the economy” for months.

Contentious at the best of times--perhaps united only when faced by the guns of last August--Russia’s democrats are now divided on several fracture lines, one being a drive to create new power bases. For instance, Mayors Gavriil Popov of Moscow and Anatoly Sobchak of St. Petersburg, heads of Russia’s two biggest cities, embrace the same proposal for a new constitution.

Sobchak has recently gotten into rhetorical fights with the authors of another new draft constitution, one written and amended by Russian lawmakers that, naturally enough, defends the interests of the legislative branch.

Public exchanges between the fellow democrats have been particularly nasty: Sobchak has called the lawmakers’ draft a recipe for a restoration of Soviet tyranny, while its main author, Oleg G. Rumyantsev, a young deputy who helped defend Russian government headquarters during last August’s putsch, says Sobchak’s alternative is nothing more than “the beginning of (the mayor’s) campaign for the Russian presidency.”

One leitmotif of the reformers, heard with increasing urgency as the Congress meeting approaches, is a need to do away with all legislative organs, including the Congress, which were elected when Communist Party leaders were able to manipulate nominating and electoral procedures.

“The legislative organs at all levels today give shelter to all those who suffered a defeat during the August coup attempt last year,” Popov, who is also chairman of Russia’s Democratic Reform Movement, told the Saturday meeting of pro-reform forces. “The soviets (government councils) have survived as the last element of the socialist past and the bastion of opponents of reform.”

As if to confirm his words, the Supreme Soviet, the smaller standing legislature elected by the Congress, approved in the main Rumyantsev’s constitution draft on Saturday and submitted it to the Congress for final action--but not before having deleted Yeltsin’s power to appoint his own consultative bodies, regional officials and military commanders without the legislature’s consent.

Wary of what the Congress may do, delegates to the meeting addressed by Yakunin and Popov called for elections to replace legislative bodies at all levels and for a national referendum to convoke a constituent assembly, instead of the Congress, to adopt a new constitution.