
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 22, 1991                   TAG: 9103220884
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOVIETS VOTE/ A MIXED OUTCOME ON UNION TREATY

THE SOVIETS are learning what the West has long known: Democracy can be a hurly-burly, messy and ambiguous process. The vote earlier this week on President Gorbachev's proposal for a "renewed federation of equal sovereign republics" was a qualified yes. Most who voted were for it. Enough didn't - a few republics declined even to set up polling places - to make mock of the notion of union.

Could Gorbachev have confined the issue to union status, he might claim a victory of sorts. But the election allowed nationalities, ethnic groups and other dissidents to showcase their own agendas. In Russia, largest of the republics, voters also were asked whether the Soviet president should be elected directly, by popular ballot - instead of by Parliament. More than three-quarters approved.

This was a bit of mischief by the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. A populist, Yeltsin is unblushingly ambitious, not to mention incendiary: He has called for "all-out war on the leadership of the country." Yeltsin favors union, but on his terms. He'd like a confederation with a weak central government, made up of independent republics that would not have to share their natural resources with others.

He'll find little of that in Gorbachev's new union treaty. It is specific on the powers of the central government: one citizenship, one currency, with the federal budget, taxes and laws having priority over others. The republics also can share in Soviet gold, foreign currency and other reserves. But what powers are held by the republics, the treaty sayeth not.

The U.S.S.R. is a house divided. The three Baltic republics already had voted for "democratic" and "independent" states. Armenia, Georgia and Moldova (formerly Moldavia) boycotted the Sunday referendum, although a few people voted if they had access to precincts. The have-not areas favor federation more than the haves: "Yes" votes were much heavier in the eastern reaches and more rural regions of the Soviet than in the grain-rich Ukraine or in Russia, biggest and richest of the republics. Democracy gives vent to selfish motives as well as altruism.

There is deliberate vagueness in the union treaty; that is typical of such documents and can be useful in averting clashes. How this crazy quilt can be sewn together is problematical, however. For one thing, republics that won't sign the draft treaty will come under the 1922 pact, which is filled with fine terminology but was backed by force.

Some in the West say the United States has hitched its own wagon too firmly to Gorbachev's star. He is changeable. He has shown a willingness lately to use the state's muscle to pull dissenters into line. He may not last.

But he has brought the Soviet Union further toward democracy than anyone could have dreamed possible - further, indeed, than he wanted. And right now, he still looks better than any likely alternative.

by CNB