Lawmakers Set Stage for Yeltsin-Bashing Session : Russia: Anger over his painful reforms could even lead legislators to do away with the presidency.

President Boris N. Yeltsin suffered an ominous political defeat Wednesday when lawmakers refused his request to postpone the coming session of the Russian Parliament, dooming him to a perilous round of attacks on his government this December.

Russian politicians and journalists are predicting that the Congress of People’s Deputies, the country’s highest legislative body, could get so carried away by its anger at Yeltsin’s painful reforms that it could do away with the Russian presidency altogether.

Even members of Yeltsin’s own coalition expect him to be forced at least to sacrifice several ministers from his besieged Cabinet.

“Our democratic system is in danger,” warned historian and Yeltsin ally Dmitri Volkogonov after lawmakers voted down the Russian president’s requested postponement by a lopsided 114 to 59.

“Today was a dress rehearsal for what could happen at the Congress that will open Dec. 1,” he said. “The majority of the Parliament . . . has actually declared parliamentary war on the president and his Cabinet.”

Another warning came from Parliament Speaker Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, who appears to be shaping up as Yeltsin’s main opponent in the looming political battle. At an impromptu news conference, Khasbulatov said: “I will die a violent death. I am being followed and my telephone is being bugged. The political regime is rushing to turn itself back into a totalitarian one. . . . Parliament is the only guarantor of democracy.”

The political tension around Parliament heightened Wednesday with word of a shootout between the Moscow police and a member of the 5,000-strong guard that protects Parliament that left one dead and one wounded. Circumstances of the incident remained unclear, but it caused a hubbub in Parliament.

Yeltsin has fought tough battles from the very beginning with the largely conservative Congress of People’s Deputies, but he will face a special, self-created threat this time.

When elected in the summer of 1991, he asked for a “credit of trust” from voters, pledging that they would begin to feel concrete improvement in their lives by this fall if they only had patience.

Instead, inflation remains at least 15% a month, unemployment is increasing, factories are closing and the ruble has continued to plummet in value, reaching 368 to the dollar Tuesday, compared to about 30 to the dollar one year ago.

Yeltsin’s approval rating has drifted so far down that the latest independent poll found that only 19% of the population support him fully, while 27% oppose him and 15% support him “only out of lack of choice.”

The Russian president had asked lawmakers to hold off convening Parliament until spring, when a new draft of Russia’s proposed new constitution will be ready for approval.

But deputies of the Supreme Soviet, Russia’s standing legislature, said they could see through Yeltsin’s stated reason for the postponement to his real fear--facing their wrath over his economic reforms.

For all their hostility, lawmakers lack the constitutional power to remove Yeltsin himself. And even if the Parliament eliminates the presidency by voting in a new amendment, the change apparently could not take effect until after Yeltsin’s five-year term ends in 1996.

The Congress of People’s Deputies can, however, give him a very unpleasant time, and the coming session appears certain to worsen relations between Yeltsin’s administration and lawmakers, already so bad that statements from both sides often verge on hysteria.

Wednesday’s parliamentary session degenerated into pure farce as legislators traded accusations with Yeltsin’s top aides. One deputy even accused Khasbulatov of being drunk.

Khasbulatov had sent out peremptory summonses to four top Yeltsin aides to come in and answer for their recent claims that forces in Parliament were planning a “constitutional coup” to oust the president and his team.

The Speaker was understandably stung by allegations voiced by two of them--Yeltsin adviser Gennady E. Burbulis and Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin--in recent interviews that he was conspiring with conservatives to somehow usurp power. Furious legislators voted to create a special commission to investigate the four men.