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Yeltsin and his aides predict that Gorbachev's halfway measures will fail, forcing the Soviet President to adopt the 500-day plan after all. But for the moment the controversy is coming close to open economic war. The Russian parliament last week passed a law placing all property in Russian territory, except that belonging to the Soviet military or the KGB, under its control. Gorbachev had earlier got the Supreme Soviet to grant him power to fire the heads of businesses that refuse to obey orders from the central government. It remains to be seen which jurisdiction can make its claims stick.
Yeltsin meanwhile is moving on the political front to effect what ally Oleg Rumyantsev calls a peaceful democratic revolution. Rumyantsev runs a commission that is putting the finishing touches on a new Russian constitution. Yeltsin wants to submit it to the Russian Congress of People's Deputies at month's end and possibly to a popular referendum in January. The draft is modeled to a considerable extent and quite consciously on the U.S. Constitution. It declares Russia to be "a sovereign, social democratic state ruled by law" and specifically recognizes "the inviolable, natural right of private property." It establishes a presidency to be filled by popular election (guess who seems sure to be the first chosen?) and grants that office enough authority to cause some deputies to gripe about "royal powers."
The Russian Federation is also maneuvering toward some kind of power-sharing agreement with its 16 autonomous republics. Yeltsin has urged localities to claim as much authority as they can cope with, delegating the rest to the Russian Federation. At the same time, Russian leaders want to prevent their federation from splintering into mini-republics. Khasbulatov speculates that it might be enough to let local authorities keep a share of taxes and revenues.
If Russia can negotiate formal treaties with its autonomous republics in a month, as planned, Yeltsin will have stolen another march on Gorbachev. The Kremlin had hoped to have a Treaty of Union spelling out new relationships between the republics and the center ready by the end of the year. That looks increasingly unlikely. Unwilling to accept the degree of central power the Kremlin wants, the republics are negotiating with one another and forming loose groupings of their own. The Russians have already signed cooperation agreements with eight republics and plan to conclude negotiations with the remaining six by the end of the month. The five Central Asian republics have signed a similar pact setting up an economic federation.
Where will it all end? Yeltsin has sketched several alternative courses. One would be for Russia to claim its share of Soviet natural resources, establish its own currency, customs union and possibly even army if necessary. That course would amount to outright secession. If Russia took it, and other republics and then districts followed suit, almost anything could happen: chaos, anarchy, even civil war.