In Russian Federation’s Unwieldy Parliament, Chaos Is Commonplace : Soviet Union: With 1,000 lawmakers, the legislature reflects the new democracy’s growing pains.

MOSCOW —  First, one red-faced Russian Congress deputy charged the podium, then another and another.

Within seconds, deputy chairperson Svetlana P. Goryacheva, an imposing figure with her beehive hairdo and prosecutor’s bark, was under storm by a crowd of outraged lawmakers, all shouting and waving papers.

“I’m calling a one-hour break,” she said, a new note of unease in her confident alto.

Once again, the Congress had collapsed into chaos.

The Russian Federation’s Congress of People’s Deputies, which gathered more than 1,000 deputies over the past week for a session in which it has not even tried to pass a single law, is widely considered one of the worst of Soviet parliaments, caught in perennial political deadlock between Communist conservatives and anti-Communist radicals.

But its problems are typical of Soviet democracy’s growth diseases--the faulty institutions, inexperience, shameless populism and crisis-induced hysteria that beset chambers of deputies from neighborhood councils up to the national Supreme Soviet.

One Soviet guest at the Russian Congress, the highest political body of the Russian Federation, this week likened its floundering to “teen-age lovemaking, compared to the marriage” skills of the 200-year-old U.S. Congress.

But less charitable observers say that the Russian Congress, like many lesser legislative bodies, is hopelessly ineffective and must be revamped if democracy here is to survive.

Otherwise, said Igor Shamshchev, a national legislator from Yaroslavl, people’s faith in political change will drop to the point that they will turn increasingly to “nonpolitical means--the hungry rebellion, the strike, robbing stores, taking revenge against bureaucrats.”

The Russian Congress’ positive response on Thursday to Chairman Boris N. Yeltsin’s bid for greater powers showed that frustrated lawmakers are increasingly inclined to hand more of their authority over to a president, a pseudo-czar, anyone who can end what has become known as “the paralysis of power.”

The Communist Party used to be the engine behind all Soviet politics, deciding everything at its plenums and in its spacious offices, enforcing new laws and guiding the economy.

The Bolsheviks designed the soviets, or councils, in the days of founder V. I. Lenin, popularizing the slogan of “All Power to the soviets” and giving workers and peasants their first roles in government. Later on, the soviets served as phony showcases, intended to prove that the Soviet Union was the greatest democracy in the world.

A national parliament of 2,250, or a city council of several hundred members, works well when party apparatchiks pull all the strings and obedient members simply raise their hands on command to vote.

But now, said Sergei Plekhanov, a prominent analyst of American politics who attended the Congress this week, “It’s like you’re trying to live in a Potemkin village, and you find that, look--there are no houses here!”

Most lawmakers have no staff. Few have quit their jobs to become full-time lawmakers. Although the days now are past when milkmaids and metalworkers occasionally served as token legislators, only a sprinkling of the lawmakers are lawyers or political scientists; certainly none had ever functioned in a multi-party system before the elections two years ago.

Even the mechanics of voting remain snarled.

The electronic vote-counting system at the Russian Congress routinely fouls up, and after switching to roll-call votes this week, deputies began to complain that some colleagues whose names were on the lists as having voted were away--as far away as France, in one case. Indeed, through television cameras stationed in the Congress hall, deputies can be observed brazenly inserting several voting cards into the desk slots, casting ballots for their absent friends.

Floor action at the Russian Congress has become so chaotic that Goryacheva wondered aloud on Thursday, “By the way, do we have house rules?”

The acting chairs--Yeltsin and his deputies, in turn--repeatedly ignore requests to put issues to a vote and appear to decide their course of action based mainly on a teacher-like desire to maintain calm on the floor. On important issues, several hundred people often sign up to speak; it has never been fully explained how those given the floor are chosen.

“It’s this super-democratic concept about bending over to hear everyone’s point of view,” said a Western diplomat who attends the Congress. “But it interferes totally with the efficiency of their operation.”

Deputies rudely drown out unpopular speakers with contemptuous applause and foot-stamping, sometimes for several minutes. On Thursday, two deputies jostled with each other and nearly came to blows over who would get the microphone next.

Parties and factions are still so embryonic that there is little discipline within them. Yeltsin increasingly employs a “consensus commission” made up of representatives of various blocs to work out thorny issues. But even when back-room negotiations come to a compromise, it often falls apart when vote time comes. Committee recommendations appear to carry little weight.

It is different in the national Supreme Soviet, where a relatively efficient lawmaking machine grinds bills through increasingly competent committees, and in other republics’ soviets, such as those of Armenia, Lithuania and Estonia, where shared nationalism helps foster consensus.

But in Russia, “the Congress is a mirror of what is happening in our society,” Vera Kuznetsova, parliamentary correspondent for the radical Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, commented. “We have a left and a right, but there is no strength in the center. It’s not clear what party is in the opposition, it’s not clear what the parties represent.

“That’s why it often turns into a talk-fest instead of passing laws,” she said, using a slang Russian term that could be translated as “blabberalia.”

Talk-fests, too, serve a purpose, deputies said, giving the public a chance to participate in high-level politics as they never could before. They also allow them to monitor their deputies’ actions on nightly television reports.

“I think history will be kind to us,” Russian deputy Victor Sheinis said. “Because society is maturing, it’s growing up, and discussion at the Congress helps that.” Still, he agreed, it is overdone these days.

In Moscow alone, there are 37 “parliaments,” from the national to the district level, totaling about 20,000 people, who as representatives have the right to wear little flag pins on their lapels, Plekhanov said.

The radical mayors of Moscow and Leningrad have made it clear that they are fed up with the unwieldy city councils, numbering about 400 members in Leningrad and 500 in Moscow. Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov is reportedly planning soon to seek popular election for the city’s next mayor--until now, mayors have been chosen by the city soviet--and a council reduced to 100 members at most.

“Of course, you can’t work in such a big forum,” said Popov aide Misha Schneider, who argues they still should be kept--somehow. “It’s like there’s a swing back of the pendulum.”

For frustrated Russian or national legislators, it will not be so easy. National elections are scheduled for 1994, and on the Russian republic’s level in 1995. Much as radicals might like to call early elections in the hope of sweeping remaining Communist leaders out of government, they are unlikely to win needed support for the idea from conservatives.

Yeltsin might be depended on to mandate parliamentary reform if he were made a full-fledged Russian president--at present, he is technically chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. But, similarly, conservatives may block creation of the post he seeks.

If nothing else, however, there is a growing consensus against the two-tiered system of parliaments used nationally, and in Russia, with a gigantic Congress as a supra-parliament that meets rarely, and a smaller Supreme Soviet as a day-to-day legislature.

“The system needs perfecting,” said Lt. Gen. Boris Tarasov, a prominent Communist conservative. “We have to bring order, raise personal responsibility, and raise the level of competence.”

Vladimir Lysenko, a Russian radical who backs a purely professional, pared-down legislature, put it more bluntly. “This Congress,” he said, “is stupidity.”