Man in a Hurry

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who took over the top job in the Kremlin only six weeks ago, underscored his intention this week to launch a broad program of economic reform. He began stacking the ruling Politburo with his own men. For good measure, he made the harshest attack on the United States of his brief time in office.

The sharp anti-United States tone of Gorbachev’s address to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, coming on the heels of the pointedly unrepentant Soviet attitude toward the shooting of an American officer in East Germany, is regrettable. At the least it seems to signal that the new party boss finds it expedient for now to maintain the prickly posture on foreign policy that he inherited from his predecessor.

The 54-year-old Gorbachev’s choices of new members for the Politburo suggest that domestic problems--specifically the lackluster performance of the economy and the widespread corruption and ideological lethargy in Soviet society--will get first priority.

Of the three new Politburo members, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov is an economic specialist who presumably will oversee efforts to modernize the faltering, change-resistant Soviet economy; Yegor K. Ligachev, who built his reputation campaigning against corruption and economic malaise in central Siberia, reportedly is being put in charge of the party’s ideological apparatus, and Viktor M. Chebrikov is head of the KGB secret police.

The newcomers all are in their 50s or 60s, with the result that, for the first time in years, a majority of the Politburo members are under 65. Neither Ryzhkov nor Ligachev had served the customary apprenticeship as a candidate, or non-voting, member of the Politburo. Of the four who now hold seats both in the Politburo and in the powerful party secretariat, only one is not a Gorbachev man.

Gorbachev passed up a chance to promote a military man to the Politburo; elderly Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov was elevated only to candidate status.

Although the new Soviet leader is plainly a man in a hurry, it remains to be seen how far he is actually willing to go in pressing for economic reforms that could undermine the power and privileges of a complacent ruling class.

Meanwhile, the harsh Soviet rhetoric of recent days may mean that, despite the movement toward younger men in the ruling structure, the watchword in Soviet foreign policy is not change but continuity, that Gorbachev prefers to avoid the trade-offs required for improved relations with Washington until he has a firmer grip on problems at home.

If that is the case, let’s hope for the sake of arms control and other important items on the U.S.-Soviet agenda that the pause will be brief. As Ronald Reagan discovered during the first year of his presidency, the big-power relationship is too important to be put on hold for very long.