Russian Lawmakers Move to Oust Yeltsin : Crisis: Conservatives take first step toward impeachment by asking court to judge legality of his action. The president seems to lose support in his own government.

Moving swiftly toward a climactic struggle for the leadership of Russia, Communist and conservative lawmakers took the first step Sunday toward impeaching President Boris N. Yeltsin, whose support inside his own government appears to be ebbing.

By a vote of 125 to 16, the Supreme Soviet asked the Constitutional Court to judge the legality of Yeltsin’s announcement Saturday of temporary presidential rule by decree. The court’s chairman, who personally branded the act dictatorial, announced that an inquiry is already under way.

If the 13-man court finds that Yeltsin violated the constitution, Russia’s first democratically elected leader could be impeached by a two-thirds vote of the full Parliament, the 1,033-member Congress of People’s Deputies.

Yeltsin’s legal adviser, Sergei M. Shakrai, has said that the president would refuse to step down in that case. But many here believe that Yeltsin would need the backing of his government, army and security forces to defy the legislative and judicial branches and stay in office.

Having lost the support of his vice president and his national security adviser, Yeltsin won surprisingly timid endorsements Sunday from top Cabinet officials for his bold decision to bypass lawmakers and force a referendum on voter confidence in his reforms.

“The president has a right to speak and propose,” Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin told the Supreme Soviet session. “The other question, whether this is unconstitutional or not, let the specialists clear this up.”

Yeltsin’s ministers of defense, interior and security took their turn before the lawmakers and gave no hint of their allegiances, heightening uncertainty whether the conflict can remain peaceful.

The president dropped out of public view after his somber prerecorded announcement on television Saturday night. Commonwealth television reported that Klavdiya Yeltsina, his 85-year-old mother, died Sunday.

Most Russians went about their weekend business as they followed the country’s deepest political crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 months ago. Outside the White House building where the Supreme Soviet held its emergency session, several thousand people on opposite sides of a road held rival demonstrations for and against the 62-year-old president.

Inside, Ruslan I. Khasbulatov presided over a legislature chosen by voters under Soviet election rules in 1990, when the ruling Communist Party put up most of the candidates. He accused Yeltsin of leading Russia to the brink of “neo-totalitarian rule, disintegration, dictatorship.”

“I would like the president to come here and explain himself to us,” he exclaimed on live television. “Let him come!”

In his televised address, Yeltsin said he acted to prevent the Parliament from leading Russia back to communism and to win renewed support for his efforts to democratize the country and steer it toward a market economy. He decreed an April 25 referendum for a vote of confidence in his leadership and for approval of a new constitution and new legislative elections.

Governments in Western Europe, Canada and Japan, which support Russia’s reforms with aid and credits, joined President Clinton’s Saturday endorsement of Yeltsin’s action.

Fearing a reimposition of imperial rule by Yeltsin’s rivals, leaders of many former Soviet republics have also voiced support for Yeltsin. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk and Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze followed suit.

“Russia now faces the danger of civil war,” Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister, told reporters in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. “I can almost smell it.”

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, who travels to Washington on Tuesday to prepare for Yeltsin’s April 3-4 summit with Clinton in Vancouver, Canada, was one of the few enthusiastic Yeltsin supporters to step forward from the government ranks.

Kozyrev said that the Congress and Supreme Soviet are defending a constitution adopted in the Soviet period that justified the “darkest dictatorship.”

Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi and National Security Adviser Yuri V. Skokov lined up against Yeltsin.

Rutskoi’s opposition was significant not only because he is Yeltsin’s constitutional successor. Yeltsin had assigned Rutskoi, an army general, to “ensure the army’s non-participation in political actions” during the period of presidential rule.

Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev, Security Minister Viktor P. Barannikov and Interior Minister Viktor F. Yerin--also appointed by Yeltsin--stood before the Supreme Soviet and insisted that their forces would “support the constitution.”

Because Yeltsin and Khasbulatov argue their cases on constitutional grounds, those statements could be interpreted either way.

Just to be sure, Yeltsin issued a decree Sunday transferring control over the guards at the Kremlin, where he works, from the Interior Ministry to his personal regiment.

Grachev, who commands Russia’s armed forces, made an impassioned plea for “political compromise” and an end of pressures on his officers to take sides.

“The army is manageable so far and remains a stabilizing factor in Russia,” he said. “But tension is getting higher with every coming hour. Thoughtless actions can split the armed forces. What will be the result? Bloodshed, no doubt.”

Two of the legislature’s three coalitions lined up against Yeltsin in Sunday’s vote--the Russia Unity grouping of Communists and conservative nationalists and the centrist Civic Union bloc dominated by Soviet-era industrialists.

The fate of the president himself, for now, rests in the hands of 13 judges named by the Supreme Soviet 18 months ago to sit as Russia’s first independent court. Since then they have ruled at least half a dozen times against Yeltsin and twice against the legislature for overstepping constitutional authority.

Valery D. Zorkin, the court’s 50-year-old chairman, played a mediating role the last time Yeltsin and Khasbulatov tangled, in December. This time the judge has thrown his weight behind the legislature.