Who Rules Russia?

By Bruce W. Nelan

BORIS YELTSIN AND RUSLAN KHASBULAtov stared each other down in the Kremlin last week, and Yeltsin blinked. More to the point, he abruptly rose from his chair and walked off the stage. Russia's President and the chairman of its parliament, the Supreme Soviet, have been in direct confrontation for months over the course and pace of economic reforms -- and more fundamentally, over who should rule Russia. Yeltsin, who stands higher in public esteem than the legislature, has managed to hold his own through compromises and concessions, including the sacrifice of some of his key planners. But after four days of shouting, an emergency session of the Congress of People's Deputies jammed the brakes on so hard that the future of reform and the presidency are now in doubt.

The struggle for power between President and parliament is not just a battle between two ambitious men or between reformers and hard-liners or even between rival ideologies. What Yeltsin has been trying to do with Russia may not be possible. Never before has a nation with such a despotic history as Russia's transformed itself into a multiparty democracy with a market economy. Yeltsin and his team of shock therapists have been at the task since the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, producing few successes and much turmoil, hardship and anxiety. As the pain mounted, Khasbulatov and the President's other conservative antimarket, anti-Western rivals muttered and threatened, then finally struck.

Yeltsin was preparing for two events in April -- a summit meeting with Bill Clinton and a national referendum on whether Russians favored a parliamentary or presidential republic -- that he hoped would strengthen his hand against the opponents of change. Khasbulatov pre-empted him by calling in the 1,033- member Congress, a mainly naysaying group elected back in March 1990 when communism was still the power in the land. The parliamentary leader was determined to establish once and for all that the legislators, not the President, were constitutionally empowered to run the country.

Assembled in the ornately pilastered hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, the Deputies unhesitatingly voted by large majorities to cancel all previous power-sharing compromises with Yeltsin, ban the April referendum, strip away the President's power to issue decrees and put the Cabinet under parliamentary control. In effect, the executive branch was neutralized and parliament took over as arbiter of personnel and policy. On Friday, when the President's proposed amendments were rejected overwhelmingly, a grim-faced Yeltsin strode out of the hall.

Presidential aides immediately insisted that if the April referendum were not held, Yeltsin would go ahead with a nonbinding plebiscite asking Russian citizens to choose between the executive and the parliament. On Saturday, Yeltsin refused to return for the closing session but sent the Congress two new proposals: water down the limitations it had voted on presidential power and agree to hold his referendum on April 25. The deputies dismissed the first request as "inappropriate" and cautioned Yeltsin that it would be unconstitutional for him to try to hold a plebiscite on his own.

Thus the question of who really rules Russia remains unresolved. The Congress is in no position to take over management of the government's daily affairs, and the President is unlikely to accept such humiliating defeat. The Congress's actions, warned his press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, indicate a "slide back to Soviet communist power." That warning was not entirely verbiage, since most of the Congress Deputies were originally bureaucrats from the Communist Party, trade-union functionaries and directors of state factories and collective farms. They are opposed to basic reform partly out of nostalgia for the old days and partly because they are determined to cling to the power and the privilege they still hold as parliamentarians.

The quarrel among the politicians has left the machinery of government so damaged it is hard to see how it can be made to work again soon. Yeltsin's referendum was intended to settle whether Russians wanted a parliamentary or presidential republic, but even if he won he would have found it hard to enforce the outcome. Any decision on a new constitution would have to come from the Congress's unwilling legislators. In any case, as long as this power struggle continues and the two leaders are engaged in personal combat, the real loser is the reform program, which has already been much diluted by compromise.

Yeltsin does not have many options left. He told the Deputies that he would go ahead with his own kind of referendum on power sharing and was also ready to take "additional measures to preserve the balance of power in the country." Whether he goes to the people with a referendum or a nonbinding plebiscite, he will again face the problem of enforcing the result if he wins. In a telephone call, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev assured U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher that Yeltsin was determined to carry out the poll, possibly by April 25, and would then try to find a way to hold new elections. If he is able to fulfill that plan, especially new elections, it could be the best possible outcome for the crisis. Many of the communist hacks would be sure to lose their seats.

For months, Yeltsin had tried repeatedly to negotiate an accord on power sharing between the executive and legislative branches, but Khasbulatov, once a Yeltsin protege and advocate of reform, paid no attention. Even on the eve of last week's Congress, the presidential team gave fifty-fifty odds that a compromise could be reached. They were hopelessly optimistic. congressional Deputies who filed into the hall were so sour about reform that they refused even to consider a motion to remove Karl Marx's rallying cry, "Workers of the World, Unite," from the Russian Federation's national emblem. In the face of such hostility, Yeltsin's conciliatory appeal for "honest and equal cooperation" went unheard. Deputies yawned and chatted as the President's supporters pleaded for strong powers to "guarantee" reforms. When that pitch failed, Yeltsin warned that if they could not find a way to agree, a referendum "will remain the only means of resolving the conflict."

In recent weeks, Yeltsin has hinted that if the Deputies try to curb his authority, he might mount a presidential coup d'etat, dissolving the Congress and ruling by decree. It would be illegal, and it could be carried out only ! with the help of the armed forces and police. They had carefully declared themselves to be outside politics, and Defense Minister Pavel Grachev banned troop movements and exercises in the Moscow region during the Congress. Even so, rumors swept the session, and one Deputy dashed to the microphone to announce that 10 truckloads of troops had just pulled up at the Kremlin. A quickly formed commission checked and four hours later reported that only snowplows had arrived. Correspondents asked a lieutenant on guard in the Kremlin's Ivanov Square about troop movement. "Are you fellows crazy?" he responded.

In the euphoria that filled the hall after Congress voted to rein in Yeltsin, only a few parliamentarians were thinking about the consequences of putting the executive branch under control of the legislature. Deputy Yevgeni Kozhokin reflected that revolutionary France was the only country he knew that was ruled by a parliament: "If Khasbulatov emerges as our Robespierre, I will be sorry for my country." A commentator for the Russian Information Agency called the sessions a "slow strangulation of the President."

The root of the conflict inside the government is Russia's attempt to function under the Brezhnev-era constitution. It has been amended hundreds of times over the past 15 years, but many of the additions contradict one another. Parliamentarians point to Article 104, which describes the Congress of People's Deputies as the highest organ of power, while presidential supporters cite four other articles that spell out a division of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

None of these niceties made any difference during the Soviet era because all policies and power were in the hands of the Communist Party. The government, like everyone else, did what the party instructed it to do. Once the party was abolished in August 1991, the organs of government had to function on their own, and found they did not know how. The force that had bound them together was gone, and they began to fly apart.

Russia needs a new constitution and democratic elections, but the existing parliament would have to approve them, and Khasbulatov thinks the present patchwork constitution is fine. Although congressional terms run until 1995 and Yeltsin's until 1996, both he and Khasbulatov have said they might favor earlier balloting. The Congress decided Saturday to refer the election issue to the Supreme Soviet, Russia's smaller standing parliament.

Yeltsin is largely to blame for letting the conflict between the presidency and parliament grow into a crisis so severe it threatens his hold on power. After his heroic performance during the coup attempt in August 1991, his authority among the Russian people was at a peak. He could have arranged to dissolve the holdover Congress and call new elections. He did not do so, and ever since, at moments of confrontation with the legislators, Yeltsin has faltered and hedged, each time ending up with less room to maneuver.

There was no sign last week that Yeltsin was in immediate danger of losing his post by impeachment or forced resignation. But his ability to ram through difficult economic decisions will continue to wane. "My best guess," says former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates, "is that the struggle will continue and that it will be a continuing drain on the reform process."

In the interest of rallying support, the Yeltsin team often depicts his conflict with the Congress as a struggle between good and evil, pitting democrats against communists and fascists. In reality, most experts believe, there is little chance of a restoration of the old-style Soviet rule. But other forms of authoritarian rule or even a dictatorship bent on reversing the reform process are possible. It is obvious that Russia is not on the fast track to transformation into a democratic, free-market society. The unadventurous new Prime Minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, a veteran industrial manager, speaks of the need for a "pragmatic, down-to-earth" approach to change. That certainly means slowing, if not necessarily ending, reforms. Russia cannot be effectively governed in fits and starts. Sooner rather than later, Yeltsin and Khasbulatov will have to find a way out of the political stalemate they have created. They cannot continue to coexist like a divorced couple under the same roof for long.

With reporting by John Kohan and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow, with other bureaus