Yeltsin Retains Military and Cabinet Support

Russia awoke Wednesday to the spectacle of two men claiming presidential authority over its 150 million citizens, as President Boris N. Yeltsin’s attempt to dissolve the hostile legislature provoked would-be president Alexander V. Rutskoi to begin assembling his own Cabinet.

But with only one exception, Yeltsin retained the support of his own ministers, including those controlling the armed forces, police and security forces, which Yeltsin must keep behind him if he is to prevail in his daring plan to force elections in December for a new, presumably more cooperative, legislative body.

He also retained firm control of the country’s communications networks, in part by fortifying guards at television, radio and telephone facilities.

Direct lines between Parliament headquarters, the so-called White House, and other government offices were cut, isolating legislative offices while Yeltsin aides began soliciting support from regional leaders across the vast Russian Federation.

The 62-year-old president had moved abruptly to dissolve the legislative branch on Tuesday, calling for elections to a new two-tier legislature on Dec. 11 and 12 and pledging to schedule early presidential elections soon after that body convenes. The climax to the dispute between the mutually antagonistic branches of government came as Yeltsin argued that Parliament consistently confounded his plans for reform and was intent on depriving him of executive authority.

The existing legislature almost immediately voted to impeach Yeltsin, nullify his decree, and elevate Vice President Rutskoi to the presidency.

The exchange of ukases set the stage for Wednesday’s standoff when Rutskoi, who was elected vice president on Yeltsin’s own ticket in 1991 but later broke with the president to protest his economic reforms, appointed his own ministers of defense, interior and security. These are the “power ministries” on which governmental authority here has traditionally relied. All three of his appointees were former government officials sacked by Yeltsin.

The sole proposal to bring the sides together came from the judiciary. Constitutional Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin proposed holding simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections. But he declined to act as a personal intermediary between Yeltsin and the Parliament.

The drama taking place at the upper reaches of Russian power seemed to leave most Muscovites indifferent after nearly a year of political stagnation.

Virtually no sign of public tension was detectable in the streets. All city services functioned normally, and businesses remained open in the capital. Government officials also reported that calm prevailed in locales across the country.

But that serenity masked the inescapably high stakes of Yeltsin’s gamble to resolve the political crisis.

One danger is that personal animosities might govern the outcome, especially because no peaceful avenues to compromise have thus far emerged. Personal rivalries are especially acute between the ministers of the two cabinets.

As his own defense minister, for example, Rutskoi appointed former Col. Gen. Vyacheslav Achalov, who was ousted as deputy defense minister in 1991 for complicity with the attempted coup by Soviet hard-liners that year.

For much of their military careers, Achalov has been the immediate superior of Gen. Pavel S. Grachev, who is Yeltsin’s defense minister. But during the coup attempt, Grachev, whom the coup leaders had counted as an accomplice, broke ranks and helped defeat the plan, earning Achalov’s permanent enmity.

“These are two guys who are quite ready to shoot at each other,” said Sergei M. Rogov, a military analyst and chairman of the Center for National Security Problems at the U.S.A.-Canada Institute in Moscow.

Yeltsin’s interior minister, Viktor F. Yerin, shares a similarly strained relationship with Rutskoi’s candidate, Andrei Dunayev.

“In the final analysis, you have two individuals fighting for the same chair,” Rogov said. “It’s a very dangerous situation, especially when the prize is power none of them could dream of two years ago.”

A second threat is that Yeltsin’s action, however high-minded its goal, could destroy this country’s fledgling experiment with the rule of law.

Yeltsin admitted that his order violates the Russian constitution, a much-amended Brezhnev-era document, but he said he was forced to exceed his written authority to end “a fruitless and senseless struggle” with the Parliament that was leading Russia to political and economic extermination.

Although such resolute action has gone over well before in Russia, Yeltsin’s move on Wednesday began attracting criticism even from people who agree that legislative stubbornness and resistance to reform was leading the country to ruin.

By far the strongest criticism came from Zorkin, Russia’s highest-ranking judge. A moderate who has clashed with Yeltsin, Zorkin argued that no matter how unpalatable the Parliament and unwieldy the constitution, they are legally constituted and must be confronted legally to break Russians of the habit of submitting meekly to despots’ assumption of personal authority.

“It is not only that the president is canceling his own oath of loyalty to this constitution,” he said, “but he thus liberates from the oath all participants in political and constitutional life.”

The court on Tuesday pronounced Yeltsin’s order unconstitutional and ruled that it made him subject to impeachment. But Zorkin set forth on Wednesday a scenario that would allow Yeltsin to remain as president.

He proposed that the legislature call simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections, and then dissolve itself. In the interim, he suggested, Yeltsin could continue exercising presidential authority.

But Yeltsin seemed disinclined to compromise. On a brief walking tour at busy Pushkin Square in downtown Moscow, he gruffly dismissed suggestions of a “dialogue” with the legislature. By his order the legislature is defunct, he observed.

“So there’s no dialogue,” he said. “Can’t be, won’t be and needn’t be.”

Despite the rhetorical drama, real confrontation was scarce on Wednesday.

For most of the day, the scene at the White House was one of disappointed expectation. In the midst of a brilliant Indian summer, fewer than 1,000 anti-Yeltsin demonstrators, mostly the elderly, infirm and disenfranchised, managed to gather to express support for the beleaguered Supreme Soviet legislature.

Some carrying red Communist flags, they trod among the debris of campfires from an overnight vigil and listened to faded nationalist harangues.

Inside the high-rise marble building, a similarly strange lack of urgency was evident. The 252-member Supreme Soviet met for less than one hour in the morning--without a legal quorum--and then adjourned for most of the day.

Members of the Officers Union and Front for National Salvation, far-right groups cherishing a return to Soviet power, roamed the halls carrying automatic weapons, a nearly unheard-of phenomenon inside the building but one apparently designed for show rather than function.

Before breaking up, the Supreme Soviet passed a law making it a capital crime to attempt to overthrow by force the Russian government--that is, Rutskoi’s.

But more decisive action against Yeltsin, including a possible impeachment vote, must await the convening of the larger Congress of People’s Deputies, which had been scheduled to assemble in Moscow Nov. 17.

* MUTED RESPONSE: Muscovites seem subdued. A20

* WHO’S IN CHARGE? One country, two leaders. A22