Arkady Volsky

Ivan Silayev, Russian Federation prime minister, was named head of a committee that will decide how the Soviet economy should be run and name a new Cabinet of Ministers. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has asked the national Parliament to debate a no-confidence motion in the government of former Soviet Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, arrested for being a coup plotter. A SILAYEV PROFILE: Born in 1930; joined the Communist Party in 1959 after studying aeronautics.

Even as it built to a bloody climax, the 18-month struggle between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the Soviet-era Parliament was never as black and white as it looked from either side. For as soon as Yeltsin defeated his enemies with a tank assault on Russia's White House two months ago, the old, simplified battle lines--democrats versus Communists, reformers versus reactionaries--disappeared.

Even as it built to a bloody climax, the 18-month struggle between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the Soviet-era Parliament was never as black and white as it looked from either side. For as soon as Yeltsin defeated his enemies with a tank assault on Russia's White House two months ago, the old, simplified battle lines--democrats versus Communists, reformers versus reactionaries--disappeared.

Ivan Silayev, Russian Federation prime minister, was named head of a committee that will decide how the Soviet economy should be run and name a new Cabinet of Ministers. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has asked the national Parliament to debate a no-confidence motion in the government of former Soviet Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, arrested for being a coup plotter. A SILAYEV PROFILE: Born in 1930; joined the Communist Party in 1959 after studying aeronautics.

Soviet authorities declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in the troubled Transcaucasian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh today, following renewed violence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the disputed territory. The official press agency Tass said Kremlin envoy Arkady Volsky, charged in July with the task of restoring order to the two Soviet republics after five months of ethnic unrest, announced the measures in a television and radio address.

The Soviet Parliament on Tuesday approved a plan that apparently returns control of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, but it also ordered the republic to work closely with the Armenian majority in the region. Armenian deputies walked out of the hall when the directive on the Nagorno-Karabakh region was approved at a closed meeting on the final day of the Supreme Soviet's fall session.

As much as President-elect Clinton may want to focus on our domestic economy, the events in the world around him may not allow him that luxury. For example, just as Clinton's economic conference was about to begin in Little Rock, Russian President Boris Yeltsin decided to abandon his acting prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, and nominate Viktor Chernomyrdin in his stead. For outsiders, this certainly seems like a sharp change in policy for Yeltsin and one that Clinton cannot ignore.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's government Thursday boldly declared its intent to forge ahead with painful pro-market reforms, defying pressure from an influential centrist bloc to compromise its programs in return for political support. "We do not think it reasonable or possible to retreat from our principled strategic course of reforms for some political considerations or for reasons of expediency," acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar told legislators.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, launching a political preemptive strike on the eve of a critical session of Parliament, declared Sunday that his government intends to stick fast to its reform program despite mounting opposition and widespread hardships. "Only one path has the right to exist today--the continuation of radical reforms," Yeltsin proclaimed. "To move forward through reforms toward a normal life--that is the main demand placed upon me by voters. . . .

Americans, absorbed in their own politics for the last six months, may be alarmed by the latest news reports from Moscow. However, the course of events in the former Soviet Union is far more orderly and even more hopeful than it seems. No one of importance in Moscow is trying to overthrow Boris Yeltsin. He is not an American President with his own Cabinet, but more like a French president, with a prime minister in charge of the cabinet.

When a frustrated reformer named Boris G. Fyodorov resigned as finance minister in Boris N. Yeltsin's first Cabinet two years ago, he made a prophetic prediction. Yeltsin was then the newly elected reformist president of Russia, and Fyodorov was the co-author of an audacious plan to create a market economy in 500 days. The plan faltered under Communist resistance.

The Bush Administration plans to encourage U.S. companies to invest millions of dollars of their money and some of their best technology in the Soviet defense industry--to help convert it to civilian production and private enterprise. Donald J. Atwood, deputy U.S.