Yeltsin, Foes in Parliament End Standoff

President Boris N. Yeltsin and the Parliament, opponents in Russia’s worst political crisis since the demise of the Soviet Union, made a peace pact Saturday that should let Yeltsin keep his prime minister for at least four months but dilutes Yeltsin’s once-Titanic authority.

Over the loud, angry protests of extreme reactionaries, who were excluded from the deal-making, the compromise was adopted by a slender 20-vote margin in the Congress of People’s Deputies in a vote rammed through by Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov.

“We have drawn back from the abyss,” one relieved liberal deputy, Victor L. Sheinis, said after the compromise was approved. “We have spent all week rushing toward the precipice, and finally, thank God, we have taken a small step back.”

In a show of reconciliation and unity, the silver-haired Yeltsin returned to the chamber in the Grand Kremlin Palace for the first time since storming out Thursday and shook hands with Khasbulatov after the vote.

Two days earlier, Yeltsin had accused the Parliament chairman of spearheading efforts to return Russia to a dictatorship.

A subdued Yeltsin assured Russians on television during the evening that the accord means that “the people can live peacefully. There will be no collisions, no coups or other anti-constitutional actions.”

The truce follows an uproarious week in which Yeltsin failed to win confirmation in the conservative-dominated Parliament for acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar. Outraged, Yeltsin demanded a referendum on public trust in the Congress. On Friday, Congress voted to bar Yeltsin from holding such a plebiscite.

The government was paralyzed, and some politicians warned that Russia itself was being ripped apart.

In a nutshell, the nine-point accord reached Saturday after tough negotiations between Yeltsin, Khasbulatov, their entourages and Constitutional Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin requires Yeltsin to consult with the deputies and then, if necessary, propose several candidates for the prime minister’s post.

That is a complete change from the position Yeltsin had steadfastly maintained until Friday night by insisting on keeping Gaidar and only Gaidar.

Yeltsin has now agreed to nominate one of the three top vote-getters from Monday’s straw poll in the Congress as Russia’s prime minister.

If his candidate, almost universally expected to be Gaidar, cannot win formal confirmation, then Yeltsin said on television that he will have Gaidar remain anyway as acting prime minister until Congress reconvenes next April.

That should calm Western leaders and financial circles, who regard the 36-year-old economist’s presence at the helm of Russia’s government as a guarantee that Russia’s leaders are serious when they say they want to build a market economy.

As a result of Saturday’s compromise, “there is very little chance that someone else will (soon) replace Gaidar,” Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev predicted confidently. Since November, 1991, Gaidar has been the government’s mastermind behind Russian economic reform.

In another concession to the Parliament, 48 hours after triggering a power crisis by demanding a referendum so that, in essence, the Russian public could choose between him and the Congress, Yeltsin agreed to forget about the whole idea.

The 61-year-old president may have had second thoughts after hearing pro-Yeltsin deputies tell him bluntly Friday that his popularity--which he reportedly places at 81%--has plummeted because of the hardships many Russians face.

Like Yeltsin’s need to compromise over Gaidar, his decision not to seek a mandate from the people in a referendum is a sign of how the stature of Russia’s first democratically elected leader has diminished.

Under Saturday’s accord, a referendum is to be held April 11, but it is supposed to concern the principles of a new Russian constitution. Reformers expect one key question will be elimination of the Congress, a relic of the Soviet past.

From Khasbulatov and other members of Parliament who attended the negotiations, Yeltsin also forced a good deal of backpedaling, including a freeze on laws or constitutional changes adopted by the Congress that would allow legislators to suspend Yeltsin’s decrees or terminate his powers if he tries to dissolve either the Congress or the smaller standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet.

Extreme conservatives and enemies of free-market reforms, whose influence had been growing in the Congress and seemed unbeatable late last week, shouted furiously to protest Khasbulatov’s decision to put the compromise to a vote and paced the aisles seeking a working microphone.

“Khasbulatov has betrayed the Congress!” an angry Ilya V. Konstantinov declared.

Konstantinov, leader of the reactionary Russian Unity bloc, accused Khasbulatov of retreating out of fear that if Yeltsin were to hold his referendum, Khasbulatov and all other members of Parliament might have to run for early reelection. Khasbulatov, for his part, is now one of the most disliked men in Russia.

Foes of the deal called it illegal because a simple parliamentary majority was used--improperly, they charged--to alter the constitution. Even Oleg G. Rumyanstev, a Yeltsin supporter who is secretary of the commission drafting a new constitution, acknowledged the compromise’s legality was dubious in places.

The Constitutional Court’s Zorkin, asked by opponents to certify the constitutionality of the deal he brokered, didn’t hesitate to use political arguments, recalling the words of the great czarist-era reformer Pyotr Stolypin: “They need great cataclysms, but we need a great Russia.”

In the view of Yeltsin adviser Sergei B. Stankevich, the compromise should achieve “at minimum, political stabilization for three, four months.”

But it merely puts off until the referendum and parliamentary session in April the resolution of some of the knottiest problems in Russian political life--the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, the fate of the Gaidar government and the role of a Soviet-era creation like the Congress in a democratic Russia.

Yeltsin’s most implacable enemies vowed to increase their opposition activities.

“We are free now to call for mass actions and strikes,” said Mikhail G. Astafiev, another leader of Russian Unity. “We shall launch a campaign against the deputies that voted for this agreement and broke the law along with the president and the Speaker.”

With Saturday’s deal, Yeltsin achieved what he had unsuccessfully attempted on the eve of the Congress--a division of the government’s opponents into extremists like Astafiev and moderates with whom the president could come to an understanding.

Finally, the “healthy middle” has emerged victorious, Nikolai I. Travkin, leader of the Democratic Party of Russia and a party to Saturday’s negotiations, told the Congress.

Getting Khasbulatov to play ball was key. Social Protection Minister Ella A. Pamfilova begrudgingly said that Khasbulatov’s ability to deliver an “obedient majority” was an indispensable ingredient of success.

Before cutting Saturday’s deal, Yeltsin made another concession to deputies by firing Gennady E. Burbulis, his most influential adviser and an arrogant figure whom even some pro-Yeltsin Parliament members object to, the Interfax news agency said.

Sergei L. Loiko, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this story.