Yeltsin Party Fragments Over Russian Unity

The political movement that brought Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to power split into two quarreling factions Sunday over the unity of the vast Russian Federation, the place within it of various ethnic groups and its destiny as a nation.

A second, underlying issue, however, is Yeltsin’s own vision of the Russian Federation’s future and his current leadership of the country, now that he has gathered almost total power into his hands.

While reflecting the deep political divisions among Soviet democrats and within society itself, the split of the movement Democratic Russia will further diminish the support that Yeltsin has had within the Russian legislature and add to the sense of growing fragmentation here.

Three of Democratic Russia’s constituent parties broke away at the conclusion of the movement’s second congress over the weekend to form a new, more conservative and more nationalist group, the Democratic Coalition of Russia, to defend the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity and protect the interests of Russians living in other Soviet republics.

“Democratic Russia has never been a unified structure,” said Nikolai P. Travkin, leader of the Democratic Party of Russia, one of the breakaway groups. “The only goals it had were to win in presidential elections in Russia and to destroy the regime. Both were successfully accomplished--there are no more goals left for the movement.”

Travkin said that the fundamental issues in the split were the future of the Soviet Union as a federation or confederation of republics and the unity of Russia.

“We stand for the maintenance of the (Soviet Union) as a federation on a voluntary basis and an indivisible Russia,” Travkin said. “Otherwise, we will have civil war.”

Sharp differences also emerged during the weekend congress, however, on Yeltsin’s leadership, his efforts to extend his reach to all levels of the government throughout the Russian Federation and his proposed economic reforms.

Although both Democratic Russia and the breakaway group support Yeltsin, the new group wants stronger, more forceful leadership, even “a heavier hand,” as some delegates put it.

“To begin an economic reform, we need political stability,” Travkin commented. “This is the first thing to do.”

The new group supports Yeltsin’s crackdown on nationalist insurgents in the southern Chechen-Ingush region, but it would like him to take bolder steps on behalf of Russians living in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and to defend Russians in Soviet Central Asia.

Democratic Russia, on the other hand, called on Yeltsin to suspend his state of emergency in the Chechen-Ingush region and proposed a “congress of democratic forces” from throughout the Russian Federation to resolve the conflict between the emerging nationalism of Russians and that of the ethnic minorities in the republic.

Visceral politics are involved: Russians who ruled both the Soviet Union and the czarist empire that preceded it are suddenly finding themselves to be powerless minorities, even within the Russian Federation, and the fear of “Russians as victims” is reverberating through Yeltsin’s headquarters, known from its marble facade as the Russian White House.

Although Yeltsin imposed a state of emergency on the Chechen-Ingush region over the weekend, many participants in the Democratic Russia congress criticized him for failing to act earlier when a retired general had effectively mounted a local coup d’etat , proclaimed the region’s independence and held elections in which he won the presidency.

Russia now faces the serious prospect of being divided into perhaps 20 or more “independent” states as autonomous regions “secede” in order to take full control over their own natural resources and economic development.

Democratic Russia, concluding its congress, restated its support as a movement of a “united but divisible Russia” in which ethnic minorities in autonomous republics, such as Tataria, can indeed declare their independence and secede through a constitutional process under the principle of “national self-determination.”

Democratic Russia, which first took shape as a coalition of liberal and radical political groups in early 1990, organized the campaigns that won democrats working control of the Russian Parliament, the Moscow and St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) city councils and scores of other regional governments against the entrenched Communist Party.

Last spring, it organized Yeltsin’s successful campaign for the Russian presidency.

But the major elements of the coalition have been increasingly at odds over its future and that of the country. There have also been angry disputes over the “spoils” of their past victories--the allocation of the property seized from the Communist Party.

“The Democratic Party of Russia is stronger than the rest of the movement,” Travkin said of his party. “Our active membership is more than 50,000 people working in our organizational structures. If we take the people who come to support us at rallies, we will have more than 3 million members.”

Criticizing the Moscow leadership of the movement Democratic Russia, Travkin said: “They have no concept or program of action--and we have both.

“We eliminated the one-party system we had for many years but, after the putsch, the leadership of Democratic Russia took the place of the old Communist Party Central Committee. Their stand is--those who are not with us are against us. This is fascism.

“So, this division had a positive effect in that we rid ourselves of the one-party system once again and now have two parties that differ in principle.”

Andrei Ostroukh, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this story.