In Defeat, Yeltsin Vows to Take Case to People : Politics: Russian leader storms out of Parliament after it cuts his power. He plans national referendum.

President Boris N. Yeltsin stalked furiously out of Parliament on Friday as it proclaimed itself supreme ruler in Russia, and he quickly set in motion the machinery to take his case for fast-paced reform and a stronger presidency directly to the voters.

“Boris Nikolayevich has understood that he has only one person left with whom he can talk: the people of the Russian Federation,” declared his press secretary, Vyacheslav V. Kostikov. He said Yeltsin would never set foot again in the Congress of People’s Deputies, as the Parliament is formally called.

But members of the conservative-led chamber drew back a whisker from plunging the nation into complete political chaos; extending the emergency session, they later put back on today’s agenda the countrywide referendum that Yeltsin wants in order to lay the legal groundwork for a U.S.-style presidency, as well as early elections for the presidency and the Congress.

“If I were a newsman, I would print the following headline: ‘The referendum is dead, long live the referendum,’ ” First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir F. Shumeiko joked in a rare moment of humor on a tension-filled day that some deputies thought would see Yeltsin illegally proclaim martial law.

Earlier, the Congress ignored a last-ditch plea from Yeltsin and gave final approval, 656-184, to a resolution that he had vociferously opposed. It considerably reduced the president’s powers and canceled a national referendum that the Parliament had previously scheduled for April 11.

Yeltsin’s humiliating defeat marked the decisive triumph of a coalition of forces in the Congress hostile to fast-paced market reforms and the pro-Western course steered by Yeltsin. The forces ranged against the president included the parliamentary leadership, dominated by Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov and other ex-Communist apparatchiks.

“We stand on the threshold of revolution, on the threshold of unforeseeable things,” warned Sergei M. Shakhrai, Yeltsin’s chief ombudsman at the Congress.

The drama that raged inside the Kremlin’s red-brick walls, even as a fierce blizzard outside gave way to a beautiful and frigid Russian winter day, seemed certain to sow disorder at all levels of the vast country’s political life.

“What’s really grave is that between the executive and legislative branches in the provinces at all levels there will now be this struggle,” predicted Valentin P. Fyodorov, governor of the faraway Pacific Ocean island of Sakhalin.

Liberal Deputy Viktor L. Sheinis said the resolution that was passed also poses “a serious danger for the breakup” of Russia, because one byproduct of the exhausting Yeltsin-Khasbulatov struggle has been the sapping of central authority and the rush by authorities in the country’s regions and 22 autonomous republics to fill the void.

Justice Minister Nikolai Fyodorov charged that by passing a blatantly “unconstitutional” resolution, the Congress had tried to downgrade Yeltsin to a “puppet president.”

Voiding a power-sharing deal that Yeltsin struck with Khasbulatov three months ago, the resolution empowers the legislature to annul Yeltsin’s decrees, resolutions and orders--the legal instruments he has used to enact many of Russia’s market-based changes.

The Congress also granted the Council of Ministers, or Cabinet, the right to deal directly with the legislature and to propose bills--a seemingly innocuous clause that Shumeiko told reporters is actually intended to “drive a wedge” between Yeltsin and his prime minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

Under the resolution, if Yeltsin tries to “dissolve or suspend” the Congress, his powers are supposed to be terminated immediately.

Presidential spokesman Kostikov said the resolution marks nothing less than a “backslide toward Communist Soviet rule.”

Adopt it, Yeltsin warned deputies earlier, and “there will be no rule by the soviets (legislative bodies like the Congress) nor dual power, but the absence of power in Russia.”

His appeal was heeded by only 326 members of the 1,033-seat legislature in a separate vote on whether to preserve presidential powers intact.

Yeltsin promptly rose from his desk at the head of the hall and, silent but glowering, stormed out.

Within three hours, Kostikov said, Yeltsin submitted two questions to the Central Elections Commission to be put directly to voters. The questions had been submitted by Yeltsin to the Congress earlier, but the deputies rejected them for discussion. They are:

* “Do you agree that the Russian Federation should be a presidential republic?”

* “Do you agree that every citizen of the Russian Federation should have the right to own, use and sell land as its owner?”

Shumeiko has said the Yeltsin camp wants the land issue on the ballot to ensure that enough people take part in the referendum. Two million Russians have signed petitions demanding a referendum to enshrine a cardinal principle of capitalism, the right to freely dispose of land, in Russia’s constitution. No such right exists now, because the constitution is largely a product of the Soviet era.

Kostikov said that if Yeltsin wins a “yes” to both questions, then, “supported by the population, he will be able to propose his presidential constitution to the country.”

Shumeiko said that whatever the Congress’ decision, a nationwide vote will now take place April 25, a date change necessitated by a law requiring the texts of referendums to be published one month in advance.

If the Parliament refuses to bless a full-fledged referendum, he said, the government will go ahead anyway with a non-binding “plebiscite.”

Fyodorov, the top executive official on Sakhalin, acknowledged that many conservative-controlled local legislatures might refuse to cooperate.

“Then we administrators step in,” Fyodorov said in an interview.

If local lawmakers reject a full-dress referendum, even something akin to “opinion surveys” could be held in factories or specific industries such as the railways, he said.

The dubious legality of such measures was acknowledged by some Yeltsin backers, including Russia’s justice minister, who contended, however, that Congress broke the law first by rescinding a referendum that it had already approved.

Moreover, if the Congress persists in opposing a referendum, an affirmative answer to Yeltsin’s first question--the issue of a “presidential republic”--would have no legal standing. To translate such an expression of opinion into law, he would need recourse to a whole new body such as a “constituent assembly”--something the Congress would surely denounce as illegal.

Khasbulatov, who held closed-door talks with Yeltsin in the afternoon at the president’s Kremlin residence, said that along with the referendum proposal, the Congress will also debate whether to schedule simultaneous early elections for the presidency and the Parliament. That would be another way to end his contest of political wills with Yeltsin.

The Congress placed both items on its agenda for discussion today.

At the moment, the Congress must hold new elections in 1995, with presidential elections the following year. If all of today’s players remain in office, at least two more years of government gridlock seem assured.

“Everybody must realize that if the Congress decided to impeach the president, the president all the same would stay in his post,” Shakhrai said. “And if the president signs a decree disbanding the Congress, the Congress will not be disbanded.”

Feeling their oats, anti-Yeltsin deputies have also offered a draft resolution that would seize control of the Itar-Tass news agency, the country’s two state-funded television networks and the Federal Information Service from the government and put it in their hands.

After they ignored Yeltsin and adopted the rsolution he opposed, some deputies, including Russian nationalist Viktor V. Aksyuchits, expected that Yeltsin might use the army to disband the Congress. Military men among the deputies, however, said they would refuse such orders.

“Against legally elected bodies, including the soviets, no one will move,” air force Maj. Gen. Alexei F. Bazarov said.

Yeltsin had hinted darkly at a possible resort to force before the Congress convened Wednesday, but Shakhrai said such a move was “out of the question.”

Plenty of opposition deputies, who think Yeltsin wants to become a tyrant, disagree. One leading Yeltsin foe, Mikhail G. Astafiev, threw the Congress into an uproar in the afternoon by reporting that a “column of trucks carrying armed people” had entered the Kremlin.

A committee chairman hastened to see Security Minister Viktor P. Barannikov and then reported back to deputies: The vehicles were snowplows.

RISKY RUSSIAN VOTE: Russians suffering from reforms could reject Yeltsin. A8