MOSCOW — Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin pushed lawmakers Saturday to adopt a draft constitution that he said would place the rights of individuals above the rights of the state for the first time in Russian history.

The lawmakers gave preliminary approval to the draft constitution on the closing day of a momentous session of the Congress of People's Deputies, the Russian republic's Parliament, during which Yeltsin won broad new powers to implement his radical economic reform plan.

By promoting the new constitution, Yeltsin was apparently trying to assure both lawmakers and the world that, although he had won vast new authority, he does not intend to use it to set up a dictatorship.

"The draft (constitution) contains secure legal guarantees against totalitarianism, against supremacy of ideology and against violence as a state ideology," the 60-year-old president said in a Kremlin address.

Yeltsin stressed that it would be unacceptable for Russia to keep its current constitution.

"A constitution adopted by a totalitarian society cannot be a basis for a new society," he said. "Adoption of the new constitution would enable Russia to join the world community as an equal."

Yeltsin said that under the proposed constitution, "neither the Communist Party, nor the nation, nor any other party, but rather the individual himself is the supreme value."

One part of the draft constitution, called the declaration on the rights and freedoms of a person and citizen, resembles the U.S. Bill of Rights.

"It was written in the spirit of the American document," said Viktor L. Sheinis, a member of the congress' constitutional commission and an author of the draft now under consideration.

Sheinis called the draft "revolutionary."

"Past constitutions declared human rights, but in reality it was based on the priorities of the interests of the state," he said.

Lawmakers "passed for consideration" the draft constitution--which envisions a strong presidency--and sent it back to committees to revise before submission to the next congress, scheduled in March.

The Constitutional Court, appointed earlier in the week, will be empowered to handle problems arising in the transition phase--before the new constitution is adopted and while the old constitution is still in effect, Sheinis said.