Mr. Kravchuk quit the Communist Party in August when the party's doom was sealed in the failed Kremlin coup.

Mr. Nazarbayev suffered little for having hesitated a day in denouncing last August's Kremlin coup.

This will present an immediate challenge for Mr. Yeltsin, who has reportedly been away writing a memoir of the failed Kremlin coup in August.

Politically conservative, Belarus earlier this month lifted a ban imposed on the Communist Party following the failed Kremlin coup of August 1991.

The flag was raised today over the republic's Parliament headquarters amid the barricades and jubilant crowds of the successful three-day vigil against the Kremlin coup.

When the three Baltic republics achieved independence last summer after the failure of the Kremlin coup, Mr. Gorbachev eventually recognized them.

This is the proposed power-sharing compromise between the central government and the major republics that fell apart in the wake of the failed Kremlin coup last week.

Together they account for about 70 percent of the population and economic output of the nation, which began crumbling last month after an aborted Kremlin coup.

The special congress is itself shaping up as an unpredictable factor in the volatile political situation following the failed Kremlin coup and the collapse of Soviet Communism.

When the Soviet empire started to implode after the abortive Kremlin coup last month, Georgia's opposition started to take to the streets in a series of demonstrations.