Russian Parliament Pushes Showdown With Yeltsin : Politics: Soviet-era lawmakers vote to ask court to decide the constitutionality of the vice president’s suspension.

The Russian legislature Friday challenged President Boris N. Yeltsin’s decision to “suspend” his vice president and asked the nation’s top court to decide whether Yeltsin violated the constitution.

The Supreme Soviet’s 141-10 vote could set Russia’s paralyzing power struggle on a course similar to the dramatic events of last March when the court ruled that Yeltsin overstepped his powers in another case, and the Parliament came within 89 votes of impeaching him.

Lawmakers on both sides warned that Yeltsin is politically stronger now than he was then and might try to use the confrontation to push aside the reactionary Soviet-era Parliament, which opposes his free-market reforms, and call new elections.

Some deputies rose Friday in the Supreme Soviet demanding a vote to declare Yeltsin’s action illegal and to start new impeachment proceedings. But their chairman, Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, insisted first on seeking support from the Constitutional Court.

Until then, the Supreme Soviet voted to suspend the Yeltsin decree that suspended Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi from his duties Wednesday. “The decree is no longer in force,” Khasbulatov declared.

Rutskoi, a popular hero of the war in Afghanistan, was Yeltsin’s hand-picked running mate in Russia’s first democratic presidential election in 1991. He turned against Yeltsin last spring in a power struggle now being waged through rival charges of corruption.

Using documents supplied by Rutskoi, Russia’s prosecutor is investigating charges that First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir F. Shumeiko, a leading Yeltsin ally, stole $14.5 million in public funds earmarked to buy equipment from a Swiss company for a baby food factory in Russia.

A special panel set up by Yeltsin accused Rutskoi last month of taking a $3-million kickback from the same Swiss company to facilitate a separate contract to export baby food to Russia and of hiding the money in a secret bank account in Zurich. The Moscow prosecutor is investigating those allegations.

In a written message, Yeltsin told lawmakers Friday that the “war on corruption” is “being used to exacerbate political confrontation” and is undermining the government’s credibility. He asked them to support his decision to strip both Rutskoi and Shumeiko of their powers until the investigations run their course.

Lawmakers did not challenge Shumeiko’s suspension, but some of them argued that because Rutskoi was elected by the people, Yeltsin is barred by the constitution from interfering with his powers and should automatically forfeit the presidency if the court upholds that view.

“In that case, the Vice President Rutskoi will have to intervene and issue a decree of his own assuming presidential powers,” said Vladimir B. Isakov, chairman of the legislature’s committee on constitutional legality.

Yeltsin argued in his message that his decree “contains no direct contradiction” of the constitution, which outlines no procedure for removing a vice president.

The president’s action was widely viewed as a deliberate provocation. Rutskoi had already been stripped of all official assignments and many of his bodyguards last spring, after he broke with Yeltsin and announced his own presidential ambitions.

Many lawmakers said Yeltsin fully expects the current confrontation to lead to an extraordinary session of Parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, and a move to impeach him. In that case, they said, he might have enough support to block a two-thirds quorum of its 1,033 members.

“That is exactly what they need to pronounce the Congress illegitimate,” said Mikhail G. Astafiev, a Yeltsin foe in the Supreme Soviet. “Masses of people would be brought into the streets calling for new elections.”

A Yeltsin aide this week announced plans to install unilaterally a new house of the legislature, the Council of the Federation, made up of delegates from Russia’s 88 political subdivisions, with the aim of pushing through a proposed constitution requiring parliamentary elections. Current lawmakers oppose such a move.

The constitutional draft was approved by an assembly chosen by Yeltsin after he won an April 25 vote of confidence from Russian voters. The referendum followed a dramatic series of events in which Yeltsin tried to assume emergency powers, was overruled by the Constitutional Court and then survived the impeachment vote by Congress.

“I am sure the president consciously issued the decree against Rutskoi to step up the struggle with this reactionary Parliament to terminate its existence as fast as possible,” said the Rev. Gleb P. Yakunin, a Yeltsin supporter in the Supreme Soviet.

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.