Aiming for Votes, Russian Factions Fire Brash Salvos

In a two-pronged attack on reality in this unruly election season, Russia’s Communist-dominated parliament voted Friday for restoration of the Soviet Union, and President Boris N. Yeltsin announced that he had hit on a formula for ending the war in rebel Chechnya.

While neither aim has even a remote chance of being fulfilled, the brash moves by the rival forces contending in a June presidential election have more in common than just the emptiness of the gestures.

Yeltsin and the Communist deputies led by presidential hopeful Gennady A. Zyuganov have made clear only a few weeks into what promises to be a bruising election battle that they will tell their respective constituencies exactly what those groups want to hear.

With their 250-98 vote declaring the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union “illegal” and rescinded, Zyuganov’s Communists hope to capitalize on the wave of nostalgia washing over Russia for the grim security of the era when Moscow was the powerful epicenter of a nuclear-armed empire.

Economic hardships have erased memories of the repression, shortages and isolation that also marked that time.

Communist deputies of the lower house, the state Duma, were joined by ultranationalists and many independents in the symbolic vote to abrogate the 1991 decision of a now-defunct legislature to renounce the union treaty imposed by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1922.

Yeltsin tried to fend off the Duma action in a television appearance Thursday night, in which he described the Soviet Union’s dissolution as sad but inevitable and, in any case, not his fault.

Shortly after the Duma vote, Yeltsin told regional leaders meeting in the Kremlin that any effort to force a new union would compel him to “resort to extreme measures.”

The 65-year-old president did not make clear what counteractions he had in mind, but he accused his opponents of trying to force cancellation of the June 16 election.

As the current front-runner, Zyuganov is unlikely to have any such motive. Yeltsin, on the other hand, is trailing badly and may be watching for a pretext to scuttle the confrontation that could oust him from power.

After meeting with other members of the Russian Security Council to “polish” his Chechnya peace plan, Yeltsin told reporters that the Duma deputies “seek to jeopardize the presidential elections” with their move toward resurrecting the Soviet Union.

He also said he had informed the heads of state from the other 14 former republics of the Soviet Union that they had nothing to fear from “this irresponsible resolution” because it had no chance of winning his endorsement.

The three Baltic states have refused even to join the weak Commonwealth of Independent States in which the other 12 former Soviet entities cooperate, and Ukraine is also hostile to suggestions that the old Moscow-run empire be re-created.

Legal experts from the Constitutional Court immediately backed Yeltsin’s interpretation that the vote carried no legal weight, but the Duma’s action could still elevate the issue of restoring Russia’s lost clout to a cause celebre for the election.

Most Russians are resentful of the capitalist changes that have stiffened competition for jobs, abolished price subsidies and grossly reduced their buying power. Communist promises to bring back the good old days hit home with many voters.

Foremost among the sore spots with pensioners and patriots of the past era is the diminished role Russia has in the world in comparison with the erstwhile superpower Soviet Union.

“It is clearly not feasible to restore the Soviet Union--it is simply impossible,” said Andrei V. Kortunov, a historian and prominent political analyst.

Nevertheless, he added, “this is all very painful for Yeltsin. He does not want to be charged with digging the grave for the former Soviet Union.”

The seemingly irresolvable Chechen crisis is a second cross for Yeltsin to bear, as he provoked the blood bath with his December 1994 invasion of the Caucasus republic and is now vulnerable to acts of retaliation against Russian civilians by the surviving rebels.

Even as Yeltsin proclaimed his secret strategy, fighting raged in the breakaway region.

Federal troops using heavy artillery attacked rebels loyal to Chechen leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev in the village of Bamut in an effort to drive them out of one of their last strongholds.

*

Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov, a former commander of government forces in Chechnya, spoke out against withdrawal of federal troops from the war zone.

In an address to the Duma, Kulikov said a pullout would trigger “a chain of events directly threatening the Russian state,” the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Although details of Yeltsin’s purported plan remain secret, rumors have been sweeping Moscow that he plans to dismiss Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev as evidence of his frustration with the bogged-down offensive and to offer a scapegoat for the most damaging crisis of his presidency.

However, the political sacrifice of Grachev has been predicted since the assault on Chechnya began, and most analysts believe that Yeltsin will save that maneuver for later in the election campaign.

* SOVIET MOBSTERS IN STATE

California attorney general says emigre criminals pose threat. B3