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

DATE: MONDAY, March 18, 1991                   TAG: 9103180093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Baltimore Sun and The Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

SOVIETS APPEAR TO FAVOR UNION

Millions of voters cast their ballots Sunday for or against preservation of the Soviet Union in the country's first referendum, but the result seemed likely to fall short of the overwhelming support for a renewed union that President Mikhail Gorbachev was seeking.

Interviews outside polling places and early results suggested that most voters said yes to "the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics."

But a big minority appeared to be voting no, and Gorbachev was in danger of sustaining embarrassing losses or close calls in the country's three biggest cities: Moscow, Leningrad and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

Unofficial preliminary results showed more than 94 percent of voters in four regions of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan voting "yes." Two-thirds of the voters in the Far East city of Khabarovsk also approved the referendum, election officials said.

Official preliminary results were not expected before today.

Russian voters, meanwhile, appeared to be giving a solid majority to a separate question on the creation of a directly elected Russian Federation presidency, for which the leading candidate will probably be Gorbachev rival Boris Yeltsin. Moscow voters likewise seemed on the way to approving direct mayoral elections.

"If some madman should arise to provoke a breakup of our union, it would be a disaster for this country, for Europeans, for the entire world," Gorbachev told reporters after voting in Moscow. He called Yeltsin's skeptical stance on the union referendum destructive, and said that it was motivated by political desperation.

At issue in the vote, he said, is "the fate of our people and the fate of our whole civilization." Asked whether he would resign if voters rejected a renewed union, Gorbachev said he was confident the referendum would pass.

Yeltsin, voting across the city, declared that "this is not a personal battle between Mikhail Gorbachev and myself. The issue is one of different systems."

He said that Gorbachev "wants to preserve the old system, the huge bureaucratic and power apparatus, the Communist Party," while he himself favors an "alliance of sovereign republics" not controlled by Moscow.

In six of the 15 republics, there was only small-scale voting in factories, army bases and heavily Russian areas, with political opponents exchanging accusations and in some cases blows. The six - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova - together account for less than 10 percent of the Soviet population, but their boycott exploded Kremlin hopes that the vote would demonstrate the country's unity.

In the Moldavian capital of Kishinev, nationalists blocked six of seven polling stations and jeered and beat some would-be voters. In the Latvian capital of Riga, a reporter for the Baltfax news agency claimed he had voted five times in precincts organized by Moscow loyalists desperate for votes against the republic's secession.

Turnout was well over 60 percent in the two most populous republics, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, and hit 90 percent in parts of conservative Central Asia. But far from all voters were motivated by enthusiasm about Gorbachev's promise of a new, improved union.

The popular mayors of Moscow and Leningrad had announced they would cross out both yes and no on their ballots, in effect abstaining. Opponents of the referendum question pasted posters in subway stations portraying dictator Joseph Stalin urging voters to support the union.

by CNB