The Soviet Union takes a major step along Mikhail Gorbachev`s reform road Sunday when, for the first time since the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, it holds a multicandidate election for a new parliament that will have real, if limited, authority.
It will be an uneven experiment in the emerging school of Soviet-style democracy, however, since only a single candidate will be on the ballot in approximately one-fourth of the 1,500 races. And no possibility exists that the Communist Party will relinquish more than a tiny portion of its previously unquestioned control.
Still, the voting at 180,000 polling stations in 11 time zones will mark the end of a three-month election campaign the likes of which have not been seen in this country for more than three generations.
It has produced a remarkable, though tenuous, blossoming of the democratic spirit, with election rallies drawing thousands of people to the streets. Campaign posters-crude by Western standards-have sprouted across this city like flowers in the spring. Candidates have debated at town meetings and on television and radio.
Among them are some unlikely faces whose open participation shows how far Gorbachev has allowed his policy of glasnost to develop. One is Andrei Sakharov, the 67-year-old physicist and one-time dissident who spent the years 1980 to 1986 banished to internal exile for opposing Kremlin policy. Another is Boris Yeltsin, sacked 18 months ago as head of the city of Moscow`s Communist Party organization.
Both now seem poised to win seats in the new parliament and formalize their return from official disgrace.
Yeltsin`s campaign has been especially popular and one unofficial poll suggested he might run up a 17-to-1 vote against his lone rival for a citywide Moscow seat.
A big turnout for Yeltsin, who was expelled from the Kremlin leadership after urging faster and more radical reform of the Soviet system, would return him to the Kremlin stage.
Some 10,000 people joined in a Yeltsin rally Saturday in the parking lot the Lenin Stadium.
”For shame! For shame!” they shouted when speakers listed newspapers and politicians who have attacked Yeltsin for his unorthodox campaign against special privileges for Communist Party members. Yeltsin himself has been accused of accepting such privileges.
Although the rally was authorized, hundreds of police lined the entrance to the parking lot and busloads of reinforcements waited nearby. Some 50 trucks packed with soldiers were parked just out of sight. There were no disorders.
One of the rally speakers was poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who was applauded after reading a short poem praising Gorbachev`s policy of openness.
Like many fellow candidates, Yeltsin and Sakharov took to public rostrums in the last three months to criticize everything from the Soviet bureaucracy and the privileged elite to excessive military spending and its impact on domestic programs.
Westerners expect such rhetoric; here it was feared. In Stalin`s time people were sent to labor camps for lesser ”crimes” and even a year or two ago it was rare for a Soviet citizen to speak out except in lockstep with party policy.
At stake Sunday are 1,500 seats in the newly created Congress of People`s Deputies. An additional 750 seats already have been filled by specific groups- ranging from the Communist Party to the All Union Temperance Promotion Society-who elected members directly from within their organizations.
The congress, first proposed by Gorbachev during a special party conference last summer, is scheduled to convene in April. Its principal responsibility is to choose a new and far smaller Supreme Soviet from among its own number.
That body, which will meet as a regular parliament in eight-month-a-year session, will in turn choose the next and constitutionally more powerful president of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev, who now holds the presidency and the job of party general secretary, is widely expected to be elected to the new presidential post.
What authority the Supreme Soviet has beyond choosing the president remains unclear, though the expectation is that it will at least debate legislation.
Democracy is far from institutionalized in Gorbachev`s Soviet Union. Of all those running for seats, 85 percent are members of the Communist Party. In addition, the nomination and selection process itself was complicated and controversial.
Candidates were nominated at controlled meetings, usually open only by invitation. Many ordinary Soviets and prominent figures declared the meetings to be undemocratic.
The campaign was still carried out within a one-party system with no formal opposition group allowed to challenge the party.
”The candidates who run for office undergo a process of selection that is not democratic,” said Sakharov, who initially was denied a seat by the Academy of Sciences but now may win one. ”On what grounds candidates were eliminated I have no idea.”
Furthermore, only selected social groups were allowed to elect members directly from within their organizations.
The newly formed ”national fronts” that have sprung up around the country, and in many cases developed into de facto opposition parties, were excluded from nominating candidates.
Although Gorbachev called for multicandidate elections and genuine competition, the Communist Party itself nominated just 100 candidates for the 100 seats it is guaranteed in the new parliament.
Nonetheless, these proceedings are a far cry from those of previous years when Soviet voters had no choice other than to approve or disapprove a single party-chosen candidate.
”These are not what we in the West would call free and fair elections,” said a senior Western diplomat, ”but they are a far cry from what there was before.”
Despite his complaints about the process, it appeared that Sakharov himself would be elected to the new congress by the Soviet Academy of Sciences after first-round voting did not elect enough delegates.
Sakharov was first rejected by the academy in a move widely viewed as orchestrated by conservatives opposed to change.
The physicist`s platform was among the most radical presented during the campaign. Most other candidates` platforms were cautious and stayed well within the boundaries set by the party and Gorbachev himself in the drive to save the Soviet economy from collapse.
Stated in general terms, the platforms called for greater social justice, an increased role of law in governing Soviet society, improved housing and greater economic independence.
