Soviet Union But Back Home . . . Challenging Gorbachev, Yeltsin wins power in Russia and sets a course for sovereignty that would reduce the Soviet Union to an alliance

By Bruce W. Nelan

Suddenly, there is an alternative to Mikhail Gorbachev. For five years, the Soviet President has been putting on a political magic show. His reforms dazzled the world but produced nothing to improve the miserable daily lot of his people. He granted greater freedoms, but those liberties added fuel to the militant nationalism now threatening the fabric of the state. Yet in the midst of his failure to invigorate the economic system, Gorbachev's own grip on power grew stronger after every test. There was, everyone said, no alternative to Gorbachev.

Now there is. He is Boris Yeltsin, 59, the Soviet Union's most important democratically elected politician.

As Gorbachev grinned confidently through the summit last week, he suffered his first major political loss at home. In spite of Gorbachev's stop-Yeltsin efforts, the roughhewn Siberian populist was elected chairman of the Russian Federation's parliament. The two leaders are public antagonists and private enemies. Yeltsin calls Gorbachev indecisive and accuses him of "continuous compromise and half measures." Gorbachev calls Yeltsin "politically illiterate." As de facto president of Russia, by far the largest and most important of the 15 Soviet republics, Yeltsin can help either sabotage or salvage Gorbachev's economic and political programs. In a year or two he may challenge him for national leadership.

Yeltsin's proposals -- and they are still no more than that -- include the creation of a confederation of "sovereign" republics that would grant only limited powers to the central government. When Gorbachev charges that this amounts to "a call for the breakup of the Soviet Union," he does not | overstate the case by much. Under the Yeltsin concept, every republic's laws would supersede Soviet statutes, and the republics would regulate relations among themselves and with the Kremlin by formal treaties. Private property would be restored, and republics would have total control of their own economies, finances and resources.

Russia, which produces 90% of the country's oil and 70% of its gas, would sell to domestic customers at world prices, which are about five times higher than those now charged to other republics. Yeltsin says signing agreements with the Baltic states would be a top priority, hinting that he might help Lithuania bypass the economic blockade that Gorbachev has enforced to halt its drive for independence. These ideas are radical by any Soviet definition and put Yeltsin directly on a collision course with Gorbachev.

While there are questions in Washington and elsewhere about Yeltsin's intellectual depth and stability, he is undoubtedly the most popular politician in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's prestige has been dropping steadily, and his approval rating in the polls has now dipped below 40%. Although Yeltsin remains a communist, he calls himself a social democrat and has emerged as one of the recognized leaders of the country's nascent democratic forces. He won that position by taking on the ruling establishment before it was the fashionable thing to do, denouncing corruption and privilege while demanding the return of political power to the people. Along the way, Yeltsin turned himself into a genuine blue-collar hero.

Although Gorbachev is not a member of the Russian republic's parliament, he threw himself into a few weeks of campaigning before the vote took place. He strode the corridors of the Grand Kremlin Palace, buttonholing Deputies and urging them to vote for "unity." Translation: elect anybody but Yeltsin. He listened to campaign speeches and even gave one, a bitter blast in which he accused Yeltsin of "trying to excommunicate Russia from socialism." Yeltsin's intention to grant local district councils the authority to override a republic's laws could carry the theory of sovereignty to the point of absurdity and "lead to anarchy," Gorbachev warned.

If it was clear who Gorbachev was against, it was less certain who he was for. Russian prime minister Alexander Vlasov, the party candidate, was withdrawn before the first round of balloting, after his inept delivery of an annual report. His replacement, Ivan Polozkov, was so hard-line that many Gorbachev supporters could not vote for him, and he lost twice. Vlasov was trotted out again for the third round. On the night before he left for the summit, Gorbachev called a meeting of some 400 Deputies at the party Central Committee headquarters and suggested that they vote for Vlasov.

Many of the Deputies obeyed, but enough bucked Gorbachev to elect Yeltsin by a four-vote margin in the 1,060-member parliament. "Electing Yeltsin was the only way to preserve the trust of the people," said Moscow Deputy Viktor Shinkaretsky. "This buys us some time." Others blamed Gorbachev for bungling the campaign by attacking Yeltsin so much. "We're responsible to the voters, not to Gorbachev," said Vladimir Ispravnikov, a Deputy from Omsk. "When the party apparatus leans on Yeltsin, it only helps him."

It is one of the richer ironies of Soviet political life that Gorbachev initially served as Yeltsin's patron and mentor. During the 1970s, Yeltsin was party secretary of Sverdlovsk (pop. 1.4 million), 850 miles east of Moscow, and thus came to know Gorbachev, his counterpart in the city of Stavropol. When Gorbachev became party secretary in charge of agriculture in 1978, the friendship blossomed; whenever the two met, Yeltsin later related, "we would embrace warmly." In 1985 Gorbachev tapped him to be the clean broom needed to sweep out the corruption in the Moscow city party organization. Yeltsin handled the task with such verve, poking into the corners of public services and firing hacks by the hundreds, that he was appointed a nonvoting member of the party Politburo in 1986.

The enmity started when Yeltsin began to display a calculated indifference to protocol at Politburo meetings. As a candidate member, he was expected to show proper respect for his superiors, especially General Secretary Gorbachev. Instead he chose to treat the ritualized meetings as a setting for serious debate. In the summer of 1987 he boldly offered a long list of objections to a report Gorbachev planned to present on the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution. The party chief stormed out and left the other members sitting silently for half an hour before he returned. At that moment, Yeltsin said, "Gorbachev simply hated me."

In October Yeltsin told a Central Committee plenum that he was resigning from the Politburo and went on to denounce the slow pace of economic reform under perestroika. Particularly galling to Gorbachev must have been Yeltsin's observation that there was still not a "good atmosphere" at the top of the party. Yeltsin disapproved, he said, of the "increase in what I can only call adulation of the General Secretary by certain full members of the Politburo."

With Gorbachev leading the assault, Yeltsin was savaged at that meeting and at a later session of the Moscow party committee. In his book Against the Grain, Yeltsin reports that Gorbachev phoned later to offer him the deputy chairmanship of the State Construction Committee, which he accepted. Gorbachev then told him he would permanently be barred from politics. Writes Yeltsin: "It did not occur to him that he had created and put in motion a set of democratic processes under which his word as General Secretary ceased to be the word of a dictator."

His reputation as a daring maverick secured, Yeltsin was invited to speak at hundreds of the political, cultural and labor clubs that had sprung up. His continued popularity turned into ballots at the March 1989 elections for the new Soviet parliament. In spite of the party's attempt to keep him out, he won his seat with 89% of the vote.

After winning the leadership of the Russian Federation last week, Yeltsin said he intended to set aside personal animosities and build relations with Gorbachev, "not on confrontation but on a businesslike basis." Already in Canada, Gorbachev responded that he thought he could work with Yeltsin if he was willing to cooperate. But if "he is indeed playing a political game, then we may be in for a difficult time." The next day at a press conference, Yeltsin elaborated on the details of his program of sovereignty and economic reform, thus ensuring further clashes with Gorbachev. He increased the tension another notch by meeting with Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis and promising to "cooperate fully with the Baltic republics."

As chairman of the Russian parliament, Yeltsin is not an executive president, and with only a four-seat majority, he will have to bargain and compromise in order to pass legislation. On the eve of his election, in a shrewd move to broaden his appeal, he promised to form a power-sharing coalition with the more conservative factions. He said he had learned the "value and importance of political compromise." As a result, he will have to be diplomatic and conciliatory, which is not his natural style. His radical reform package, therefore, is not likely to become reality anytime soon.

But Yeltsin has thought beyond that. As a central element of his campaign, he vowed to push for a law establishing a true presidency in Russia and to run for the office in a popular election with multiple candidates. That was surely one factor in his victory: Deputies were impressed by his willingness to submit to an early ballot-box referendum on his leadership. If he runs, his fellow Russian politicians say, there is no doubt that he will be elected.

They also note that Yeltsin's election pledge contrasts with Gorbachev's approach to the Soviet presidency, where he opted out of popular election in favor of approval for a five-year term by the Soviet parliament. He has never been elected to anything by popular ballot. If he is still President come 1995 and he wants another term, Gorbachev will have to face a general election. He may also have to face Yeltsin. If that happens, the man whom Gorbachev helped create and then tried to destroy could become his successor.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Paul Hofheinz/Moscow