Giving Crimea to Ukraine Was Illegal, Russians Rule : Commonwealth: Parliament’s vote brings tensions between the two powers close to the boiling point.

Running the risk of provoking Ukraine to new heights of fury, Russia’s Parliament on Thursday ruled invalid the 1954 transfer of the balmy Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine.

In a move sure to bring relations between the two superpowers of the Commonwealth of Independent States even closer to the boiling point, the Russian Parliament declared that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev’s “gift” of the Crimea to Ukraine 38 years ago “lacked legal force.” It called for negotiations on the future of the choice hunk of land.

Although Russian lawmakers stressed repeatedly that they were making no territorial claims on the Crimea, Ukrainian diplomats perceived the resolution as the harbinger of major political--and possibly military--battles.

“If Mexico started to discuss the ‘Florida problem,’ how would you (Americans) feel?” asked Vadim Dolganov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow.

With a population of more than 2 million and some of the nicest Black Sea beachfront property around, not to mention lovely vineyards and bases for the large Black Sea Fleet, the Crimea is a prize worth contesting.

But Russians and Ukrainians alike worry that the dispute over the peninsula threatens to wreck the fragile stability of the Commonwealth of Independent States by raising the touchy question of where borders should be drawn.

If Russia reneges on its 1990 agreement with Ukraine to respect all existing borders, “that will tear apart the shaky basis of the C.I.S.,” warned Galina Starovoitova, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s adviser on ethnic affairs.

When lawmakers assert that they are merely seeking independence for the Crimea, she added, “People, who are we fooling? If we cancel the 1954 decision, that means we’re returning to the former jurisdiction, that is, when the Crimea was part of Russia.”

And Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitold Fokin, on a state visit to Hungary, said he fears that the Crimea controversy could trigger a “domino effect” that would bring border after border into question, Russian Television reported.

In the Crimea, the local Parliament backed away from the mounting confrontation between lawmakers who support secession from Ukraine and those who want to stay. It voted to postpone preparations for the referendum on secession now scheduled for Aug. 2 and suspended an earlier declaration of independence after the Ukrainian Parliament denounced it as the start of civil war and refused to recognize it.

With only about 40% of the peninsula’s population ethnic Ukrainians and the rest mainly Russians, along with a large contingent of Tatars, the Russian arguments that the Crimea should be returned, or at least made independent, carry considerable weight.

Ruled by a Tatar khan until the late 18th Century, the Crimea became part of the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great. After dictator Josef Stalin deported the native Tatars during World War II, the region came to be dominated by Russian and Ukrainian settlers.

The Ukrainian counter-arguments to Russia point out that if it comes to territorial rights, Ukraine could claim that chunks of Russia three times bigger than the Crimea are historically Ukrainian. Latvia, Estonia and other former Soviet republics could also demand the return of territory now in Russia.

Furthermore, Starovoitova argued, there were so many technically illegal decisions made during more than seven decades of Communist Party rule that it makes no sense to suddenly focus on one of them.

“If we start revising all the old wrongful decisions--and no doubt there are many of them--we’ll end up in a global conflict very soon,” warned Vasily Durdinets, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament. “We need political wisdom and tolerance to avoid this.”

Ironically, when Khrushchev deeded the Crimea to Ukraine, the act was intended to mark three centuries of union between Russia and its neighbor. Now, the Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet based there have become the focus of mounting hostility between Russia and Ukraine, further complicating the relationship that has frequently been compared, to Ukrainians’ chagrin, to the dynamics between an older and younger brother.

Agreements between Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk on division of the Black Sea Fleet and various Commonwealth questions have repeatedly fallen through.

Kravchuk has flatly ruled out returning the Crimean Peninsula to Russia, although he has promised it greater autonomy, and Ukrainian officials have accused Russia, with its vastly greater territory and a population three times greater than Ukraine’s 55 million, of trying to retain its old hegemony.

Russian government officials have gotten equally prickly when faced with Ukraine’s recalcitrance and its habit of torpedoing Commonwealth agreements.

Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi blasted Ukrainian leaders this week, complaining, “These people are stubbornly striving to secede from the Commonwealth, to distance themselves from Russia and make an empire of evil out of a fraternal republic.”

Yeltsin himself has been far more circumspect and diplomatically stayed away from Thursday’s Parliament session.

Just as the Crimea dispute threatens to sour relations between the two states of Russia and Ukraine, tensions are increasing within the Crimea itself, with worries mounting of possible bloodshed between backers of Ukraine and pro-Russian activists.

“This is just going to split the peninsula,” Dolganov of the Ukrainian Embassy warned after the Russian Parliament’s vote.