Ouster Bid Fails; Yeltsin Asks Unity : Russia: President calls on lawmakers to stop their political brawling and grant him power to carry on with reforms. Cabinet remains in jeopardy.

After dodging an impeachment attempt, President Boris N. Yeltsin appealed to Russian lawmakers Tuesday to stop their political brawling and give his government the power to carry on with its economic reforms.

Speaking at the opening session of the seventh Congress of People’s Deputies, the Russian Parliament dominated by former Communist conservatives, Yeltsin called for a “stabilization period” of political peace. If left unchecked, he warned, extremist forces could still bring the country to civil war.

“God help those who witness a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless,” he boomed, quoting the great 19th-Century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

Yeltsin, resplendent in a dark suit and an unusually flashy multicolored tie, emerged unscathed from the call to launch consideration of his impeachment, with only 352 deputies out of 851 voting in favor of it.

But his Cabinet of radical reformers, under Acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, remained in jeopardy. The Congress--the focus of political reaction against the high inflation and economic chaos that have accompanied 11 months of reforms--is scheduled to vote on Gaidar’s confirmation this week.

“Mr. Yeltsin himself is perfectly safe,” said Sergei Stankevich, the president’s adviser. “As for Gaidar, his chances to be reappointed by this Congress as prime minister can be evaluated as 50-50.”

The reform line Gaidar has espoused, considered a tough “shock therapy” approach, came under heavy fire Tuesday from Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, who called for the government to acknowledge “the full collapse of its economic policy.”

Khasbulatov decried Gaidar’s orientation toward a free-market “American-style” economy, heavy on private property and commercial freedoms, rather than a “socially oriented economy” more concerned with public welfare and subsidies.

Yeltsin had indicated he would reshuffle ministers during the Congress, ceding portfolios to centrist deputies in exchange for their support and compromising by somewhat softening the reforms. But he has steadfastly rejected the kind of basic change that Khasbulatov urged.

Yeltsin’s political allies expressed deep apprehension about the Congress possibly knocking Gaidar’s reforms off course.

“I am sure that in Russia now, there is no one who could successfully replace Gaidar--a reformist prime minister who knows what market finance is all about,” Deputy Pyotr Filippov said. “I can compare the situation in the Congress now with a scene that ensues when a group of peasants find a spaceship in a field, hold a meeting and approve of a pilot and a navigator to fly it. No matter what decisions they make, what crew they elect, the spaceship will not move one iota.”

Yeltsin runs no further risk of a sudden ouster by the Congress. But he too has a personal fight ahead: the struggle to preserve enough power to continue forcing through his reforms. His special rights to issue presidential decrees imposing economic change--authority granted him by the Congress last fall--expired Tuesday.

Rather than asking for an extension of his powers, he offered to channel future economic initiatives through the Congress as legislation. In return, Yeltsin asked the Congress to recognize his central responsibility for the economy and to limit itself to constitutional amendments rather than making policy.

Yeltsin billed his proposal as a viable compromise. But even his most ardent backers acknowledged that it will probably be blocked by his hard-line opposition. “His proposal is totally rational--and totally sure not to pass,” said pro-Yeltsin Deputy Victor Sheinis.

But if Yeltsin lacks a solid majority of the Congress, so do his opponents. Besides its rejection of the impeachment attempt, the Congress refused to put a no-confidence vote on the Cabinet onto the agenda. “It’s at the point where we can block anything but we can’t get anything through,” opposition Deputy Sergei Baburin said.

The nearly even division of the Congress into pro- and anti-Yeltsin forces raised the prospect of a stalemate that could result in a continuation of Russia’s makeshift political status quo, with Gaidar as acting prime minister and Yeltsin issuing key decrees.

It was this kind of legislative gridlock that prompted Yeltsin to appeal for a new “clear delimitation” of powers in Russia. In a broad-ranging, 52-minute speech that amounted to his biannual “state of the nation” address, he compared Russia’s current, mixed-up government structure with a house that “has not been completed, and there are piles of rubbish and debris around . . . and we have yet to proceed to the finishing work.”

He pledged that he would not abuse his power by attempting to dissolve the Congress, pointing out that “starting the stabilization period by destroying any of the supreme institutions of power is absurd.”

Yeltsin called for a broad new coalition of political forces to support his reforms. He had said on Sunday that he would even join a pro-reform movement or party, reversing his previous stand that the president should remain above party politics.

Defending his Cabinet’s economic record over the last 11 months of reforms, Yeltsin acknowledged some mistakes but said that, in general, “the government opened a boil that had been ready for a long time.”

“The Russian economy can now be seen for what it is,” he said, “and the picture is ugly, and many people have been frightened.”

Yeltsin promised greater flexibility on tax rates and pledged that the government will somehow compensate the people for savings accounts that have lost almost all their value in the inflation that swept the country this year.

But aside from those offerings and his proposal on an altered division of powers, his speech contained no new initiatives. Andrei Golovin, a deputy, said Yeltsin’s report sounded like “a typical speech by a regional Communist Party boss to a plenum of the party Central Committee.”

Khasbulatov, the Parliament Speaker, won far more frequent applause with his criticism of government reforms. He also reproached Yeltsin for “primitive political propaganda” in his claims that there are enemies of the reforms out there trying to sabotage him. “The number of enemies of reforms among us is infinitesimal,” he said.

Yeltsin’s political enemies did seem to have quieted. Outside the Kremlin, only about 200 demonstrators waving red flags near St. Basil’s Cathedral chanted, “Come on! Faster! Kick Boris out!” And in the halls of the Grand Kremlin Palace where the Congress meets, observers said that deputies seemed far less antagonistic toward Yeltsin than at the last six congresses.

“Deputies know now,” said Vladimir Lysenko of the pro-Yeltsin Republican Party, “that if they remove the Cabinet, and Yeltsin is stuck in a dead end, everything will have blown apart.”