Air Controllers’ Strike in Russia Falters : Labor: Walkout ends when vice president threatens to get tough. Marooned passengers storm towers.

Demanding huge pay raises, air-traffic controllers called for a nationwide strike Saturday and succeeded in crippling three major airports, but they suspended the walkout after Russia’s vice president threatened them with arrest.

Strikers claimed to have temporarily shut down up to 47 airfields, but by evening, news reports indicated that only three--Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg and the airports in Samara and Ekaterinburg--were still idled. International flights to and from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-2 Airport seemed unaffected.

Russian TV said that marooned air passengers were incensed at the controllers, especially after hearing that they were demanding pay hikes of up to 300%, which would boost some salaries to as much as 15 times the national average.

Although the disruptions in most cities were short-lived, angry passengers stormed the control towers at Pulkovo and at two airports in Siberia and the Volga region.

Domestic air travel has already been badly hamstrung this summer by a lack of airplane fuel at many airports, by heavy vacation traffic and by the divvying up of passenger aircraft that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union.

In some provincial cities, military personnel took over control towers and began directing flight traffic, although strikers claimed that the soldiers couldn’t handle the workload and in one case almost caused a midair collision.

Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, a former Soviet air force pilot who flew combat missions in Afghanistan, took a tough line against the strikers--reminiscent of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s determination to break an illegal strike by federal air-traffic controllers in 1981.

“At a time when the majority of the population can barely make ends meet,” the controllers’ call for doubled and tripled salaries is outrageous, Rutskoi said Saturday.

He called the strike illegal and said participants would be liable to arrest. Bowing to such intense pressure, the federation of air-traffic controllers’ unions sent telegrams Saturday night to its constituent organizations across the country calling for a “suspension” of the strike.

Vladimir G. Konusenko, the federation leader, said his organization was acting on an appeal from Rutskoi, who requested the resumption of negotiations and pledged there would be no “repressions” of strike leaders if talks were reopened.

But Russian TV’s evening news said criminal charges were being brought against the leaders. And news reports in Moscow said that controllers who did not report for their shifts Saturday--or who sat at their desks but refused to work--had already been fired.

“We’ve put our hope in (President Boris N.) Yeltsin,” Konusenko said. “He will listen to us.”

Yeltsin, however, did not return to Moscow as expected Saturday from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he has been vacationing. Russian television reported a few days ago that Yeltsin would address the nation Saturday to announce the government’s plan for issuing vouchers to allow all citizens to buy a share of state-owned industries.

By staying away from Moscow, Yeltsin--either unintentionally or willingly--was letting his vice president bear the burden of dealing with the strike.

The controllers claim their demands are fair compensation for such nerve-racking work. Among their goals is a minimum monthly wage of 15,000 rubles--less than $100 at current exchange rates but twice the national average.