Union Treaty

MOSCOW -- President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has begun an aggressive, high-stakes campaign to persuade or bludgeon all 15 republics into signing the union treaty he has proposed in an attempt to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union.Working simultaneously through the Communist Party, the army and the media, he is concentrating his efforts on the giant Russian Federation, where political rival Boris N. Yeltsin appears in no hurry to sign the treaty, and the Baltic republics, which have flatly refused to sign the treaty.

MOSCOW -- The coup that unfolded one year ago this week -- and then unraveled -- came about in the first place because of Boris N. Yeltsin.The plotters moved against Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but they missed their aim, even from the start: It was Mr. Yeltsin they hated.He was a reformed Communist, and, like a reformed sinner at a revival meeting, he had seen the light and was altogether filled with zeal about the misdeeds of his former comrades.Mr. Yeltsin -- today so often pictured as the beleaguered president of a sorely pressed nation -- was in the summer of 1991 the very image of undaunted leadership.

MOSCOW -- The Soviet Union published last night the latest version of the proposed Union Treaty, which significantly expands republican rights but has so far been signed by only eight of the 15 republics.President Mikhail S. Gorbachev ordered the draft to appear today in Soviet newspapers in the hope that it will boost support for the March 17 referendum on whether the union should be preserved. Critics of the referendum have complained that voters are being asked to approve in advance a "renewed" union whose characteristics are still uncertain.

KIEV, U.S.S.R. -- Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev expressed concern yesterday over reports that President Bush is prepared to recognize the Ukraine if it votes for independence Sunday."

MOSCOW -- On Monday, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Fourth Congress of People's Deputies that "the country and the people are becoming increasingly convinced that it is vitally important to preserve" the Soviet Union on the basis of his proposed union treaty.Yesterday, evidence to support his thesis was hard to come by:* Latvian officials charged that three explosions in Riga early in the day were staged by communist and military hard-liners as a prelude to a military takeover to block Latvian independence.

MOSCOW -- Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin warned President Mikhail S. Gorbachev yesterday that pressuring Soviet republics to sign a new union treaty would backfire and said it might be wise to settle for a limited economic agreement as a first step toward preserving the Soviet Union.Mr. Yeltsin stressed that the Russian Federation intended eventually to sign a union treaty, a position overwhelmingly endorsed yesterday in a vote of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies. But he said that rushing to conclude a treaty would only harden some republics' determination to quit the union.

MOSCOW -- In a fiery speech, Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin declared yesterday that the largest Soviet republic will not sign the proposed Union Treaty in its present form and accused Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of lying about Russia's support for it.Enraged by the Communist Party's media campaign against him, the burly, snowy-haired populist urged democratic activists emulate striking coal miners and "declare war on the leadership of...

MOSCOW -- Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, angered by what he sees as an attempt by the Soviet government to preserve its powers over the independence-minded republics, will oppose the draft treaty that establishes the constitutional basis for a new state, his deputy prime minister said yesterday.Instead, Mr. Yeltsin will propose his own plan, concentrating power in the republic governments -- and, effectively, putting his Russian Federation, as the largest and richest republic, in control of the country.

MOSCOW -- Mikhail S. Gorbachev has overcome the last major obstacle to a new treaty binding together nine republics of the Soviet Union -- but at a price so steep that the central government he now heads would be fundamentally weakened.Mr. Gorbachev agreed to give the Russian and Ukrainian republics sole powers of taxation within their borders, a Tass report said last night. Those republics, in turn, would be allowed to determine how much money to hand over to the central government to keep it running.

MOSCOW -- The stage was set yesterday for a historic battle over the survival of the Soviet Union as President Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered the draft of a new union treaty to the 15 republics and said their failure to sign it would be "a tragedy."Mr. Gorbachev said the 11-page treaty to create a "union of sovereign states" offered the last hope of preserving the Soviet Union. The continued existence of the union is not only in the economic interests of the republics, he said, but is necessary for interethnic peace and even international military stability.

MOSCOW -- Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, angered by what he sees as an attempt by the Soviet government to preserve its powers over the independence-minded republics, will oppose the draft treaty that establishes the constitutional basis for a new state, his deputy prime minister said yesterday.Instead, Mr. Yeltsin will propose his own plan, concentrating power in the republic governments -- and, effectively, putting his Russian Federation, as the largest and richest republic, in control of the country.

MOSCOW -- A glimpse of what a future Soviet Union might look like began to emerge yesterday as Russia and Kazakhstan agreed to seek a new, looser union run by 15 equal republics instead of a central government.While Russia, the largest republic, and Kazakhstan, the third-largest, were negotiating, the liberal new head of the KGB declared that agreement on a new union treaty was not only still possible but also vital to create a stability that would lead to economic reforms. Without such reforms, he said, the nation faces economic catastrophe.

MOSCOW -- The largely discredited leadership of the Soviet Union struggled unsuccessfully to recapture a semblance of authority yesterday as the republics acted decisively to free themselves from the old ties.Other nations began establishing diplomatic ties with the Baltics, where Lithuania started to issue its own visas for the first time in half a century. The Uzbekistan Parliament prepared to declare independence, as the Ukraine and Byelorussia already have.Moldova plans to vote on independence today, and the chairman of Armenia's Parliament, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, pronounced that "the center is dead.

What kind of new Soviet Union will emerge from the travail of seven days that shook the world? No one knows the answer to that question, but we could envision the following scenario:The first order of business is the signing of the new union treaty, which was the precipitating factor in the last desperate attempt of the old central bureaucracy to hold onto privilege and power. In fact, the treaty should be amended to bestow even greater power on the republics which have entered the treaty, placing them roughly in the same position as the American states.

Many Americans naturally assumed that last week's fleeting Soviet coup d'etat was aimed at stopping democracy. But the truth is not so simple.If democracy was what worried the hard-liners, why did the tanks not roll in the spring of 1989, to halt the first free parliamentary elections? Why did they not move in the spring of 1990, when the Communist Party was forced to relinquish its seven-decade-old monopoly on power? The hard-liners were stronger then, the people more wary, and the chances for a coup to succeed far greater than they were shown to be last week.

As Western nations squabble publicly about speeding up financial aid for the post-coup Soviet Union, the signing of a new union treaty that will determine relations between the central government in Moscow and the 15 restive republics has been quietly postponed.This may seem a curiosity in that the scheduled signing of the treaty last Tuesday reputedly was the trigger that prompted the plotters to act. What may be happening is that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, who has replaced Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the nation's most powerful politician, is going through what his own top banker has described as a needed learning process.

MOSCOW -- President Mikhail S. Gorbachev got a double boost yesterday as the Soviet parliament approved a liberal foreign investment law and the Russian parliament, urged on by Boris N. Yeltsin, provisionally backed the proposed union treaty.Both votes will substantially strengthen Mr. Gorbachev's hand in his meeting July 17 with leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations. They offer the West reassurance that there may after all be a Soviet Union to invest in and that investors may have some chance of getting their profits out."

What kind of new Soviet Union will emerge from the travail of seven days that shook the world? No one knows the answer to that question, but we could envision the following scenario:The first order of business is the signing of the new union treaty, which was the precipitating factor in the last desperate attempt of the old central bureaucracy to hold onto privilege and power. In fact, the treaty should be amended to bestow even greater power on the republics which have entered the treaty, placing them roughly in the same position as the American states.

Here's some advice for Mikhail S. Gorbachev: Free the Baltics and do it fast.Half a century after Stalin seized Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in a criminal deal with Hitler, the defeat of the reactionary coup against your leadership gives you the opening you need.What would be the advantages of such a dramatic move?* You would pre-empt an initiative that has already been %J advocated by your once-and-future rival for power, Boris N. Yeltsin.* You would put real meaning in the proposed new union treaty with the various Soviet republics by acknowledging that the Baltics, as victims of a Stalinist crime, have a right to the independence their governments are demanding.

This is a new dawn in the Soviet Union -- or whatever the country emerging from this week's failed coup will be called. Just as President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's six years of reforms altered the psychology of his fellow citizens, so have events of the past few days changed the political dynamics between the Kremlin and the republics. Mr. Gorbachev is back in his office today not only because of the personal courage and leadership of Russian President Boris Yeltsin but also because every other republic refused to join the reactionary takeover against the central government.