Soviet Union

By ANN BLACKMAN MOSCOW

This winter may be bleaker than usual in the U.S.S.R. With cold weather fast approaching and an increasingly militant labor force threatening to paralyze the transportation system, supplies of food and fuel could be in jeopardy. Soviet leaders reacted with old-style authority by proposing sweeping emergency measures: a ban on all strikes for 15 months and deployment of troops to break an Azerbaijani blockade of Armenia. But after a dramatic all- night debate, legislators in the Supreme Soviet did what not so long ago was unthinkable. They rebuffed the strike proposal as "unconstitutional" and voted instead to put strict limits only on work stoppages that affect critical industries. Said Leningrad Deputy Anatoli Sobchak, a reformist: "We just spent a couple days in the school of democracy. And all the talk led somewhere."

For Soviet lawmakers, it was a unique lesson in the art of compromise. President Mikhail Gorbachev, who supported the emergency-powers proposal, had * opened the session with an emotional address, telling the legislature that work stoppages are "holding our reforms by the throat." What followed was an often fiery, unprecedented debate as politicians clashed over the need for such draconian measures. At one point, Gorbachev yelled at the unruly Deputies, "We're not in a stadium! We're in the Supreme Soviet!"

Gorbachev's concern over labor unrest is well grounded. Since last July, when Soviet coal miners went on a three-week strike to protest their squalid living conditions and the government caved in to their demands, long-suffering Soviet workers have found work stoppages a potent weapon. So have restive national groups. For more than a month, railways have been blocked between the tiny Caucasus republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are battling for control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The blockade has severely curtailed supplies of food, medicine and gasoline in Armenia. Last week coal miners in the Ukrainian town of Chervonograd held a brief warning strike to demand immediate implementation of government pledges to raise wages and improve conditions. When one Minister called for postponing the expensive concessions, Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov rejected the proposal. "The government must keep its word," he said. Soviet legislators are concerned that if such strikes continue or spread, they could push the shaky Soviet economy to total collapse.

Despite Gorbachev's original inclination to take quick and drastic action, he hesitated to go as far as some had demanded, and initiated the bargaining session that sharply reduced the scope of the emergency plan. After the vote, Gorbachev seemed to recognize that he had presided over a new chapter in Soviet history. "I think we've done the right thing," he said. Even the more moderate measures may help cool the rash of strikes. More important, one of Gorbachev's crucial reforms seemed to be working: an elected legislature had debated and bargained its way to a sensible compromise. Just how much respite the decision will bring the Soviet Union's battered economy is another matter. The rail blockade of Armenia was broken last week when Soviet troops escorted in shipments of food, fuel and other vital supplies. But leaders of the Popular Front in Azerbaijan threatened a general strike if the military tries to take over the railways.