Union Treaty

MOSCOW -- Pressure grew yesterday for the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, as republican leaders and parliamentarians demanded that power be transferred to the 15 Soviet republics and Moscow's massive ministerial bureaucracy be replaced with a coordinating committee.They spoke at an emergency session of the Supreme Soviet that saw a direct clash of the country's two great political rivals, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin.

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.

WASHINGTON -- In the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the 2-day-old coup in the Soviet Union, not even the so-called experts of Kremlinology agree on what it means or where it will lead. But a sampling of opinion from 10 U.S. experts interviewed by The Sun offers their insights on some of the lingering questions:Q: It was well known that hard-line conservatives were becoming increasingly unhappy with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but what prompted them to such drastic action?A: Almost everyone agrees that plans to begin signing the union treaty yesterday were the key to the timing.

MOSCOW -- A solemn Mikhail S. Gorbachev appeared on national television last night to inform his countrymen of "the most profound changes in the history of our state."Russia and two other republics agreed yesterday to sign the newly drafted union treaty on Aug. 20, said Mr. Gorbachev, who held out hopethat some of the resisting republics would reconsider.The treaty would transform the country into a loose federation and give more power to the republics, scrapping a 1922 charter that created the Soviet state.

MOSCOW -- The paratroopers who gave Lithuania a scare Monday night by setting up checkpoints all over central Vilnius returned to their barracks early yesterday morning. The two young men they had detained were released unharmed.But the incident had already caught the world's attention, making headlines all over Europe, the United States and Japan as political leaders wrestle with the question of how much economic aid to offer the Soviet Union.On the eve of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's departure for Norway to give the Nobel Peace Prize address, the news from Vilnius sounded a dissonant counter-note.

MOSCOW -- The Soviet Congress of People's Deputies risked confrontation with the 15 republics by voting overwhelmingly yesterday for preserving the U.S.S.R. as a socialist country and for holding referendums on the union's future and on private ownership of land.Even President Mikhail S. Gorbachev -- still general secretary of the Communist Party -- previously had proposed substituting "sovereign" for "socialist" in the country's name to stress the republics' rights.Several republics already have dropped "socialist" from their names.

No end seems in sight to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The refusal this week of seven republics to form a new rump union under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's leadership is the kind of bad news that will benefit no one as a bitter winter sets in. It is impossible to think of any meaningful economic or societal overhaul in the former communist empire without determined cooperative efforts in the fields of foreign policy, nuclear armaments and...

MOSCOW -- The confusion over the new Commonwealth of Independent States begins, but doesn't end, with its name.The word in Russian is "sodruzhestvo," which can mean either community or commonwealth. In the context of the proclamation, it was evidently meant to mean something resembling the European Community, though the documents allowed a wide leeway in interpretation.The confusion was compounded by the fact that the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Byelarus declared Sunday that the old Soviet Union and all its "norms" ceased to exist as of the signing of the agreement.

MOSCOW -- The Soviet Union, in any form, was declared dead yesterday by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.Mikhail S. Gorbachev's efforts to mold a new central government have come to nothing, Mr. Yeltsin said, and now the republics will go their own way as independent states.The Russian leader, the most powerful politician here, had supported Mr. Gorbachev's plan for a union treaty. But yesterday, after meeting with the leaders of Byelarus (formerly Byelorussia) and Ukraine, he bowed to the new reality created by Ukraine's overwhelming vote for independence a week ago.Without Ukraine, he said, there can be no union.

MOSCOW -- Shunning an invitation to stand beside President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Red Square, Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin marked yesterday's traditional labor holiday with the striking Siberian coal miners who have reshaped Soviet politics by rediscovering workers' power.Before a crowd of miners in Novokuznetsk, Mr. Yeltsin signed an agreement to accept the transfer of Russian coal mines from the heavy-handed jurisdiction of the Soviet ministerial bureaucracy to new financial independence under the Russian Federation.