Bureaucrats Accused of Foiling Soviet Reforms : Media Attacks Seen as Reflecting Gorbachev’s Impatience; More Top-Level Job Changes Hinted

The controlled Soviet news media have accused bureaucrats in the Communist Party and in government of blocking improvements advocated by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The coordinated attack apparently reflects Gorbachev’s growing impatience with the pace of change during his 21 months in power.

It coincides with a continuing shake-up of the Kremlin Establishment. Two more government ministers and the head of the Soviet film industry have been dismissed and replaced by younger men.

A year-end editorial in Pravda, the official newspaper of the party’s Central Committee, suggests that a wider purge is in the offing.

‘A Serious Test’

“Not everything in our society is changing as fast as we would want it to,” the editorial said. “Nineteen eighty-six was a serious test for our cadres, and not all passed it. Those who drown reconstruction in empty speechifying, hollow promises and incompetent directives, and those who use their position for personal gain, are going. Their places are being taken by more energetic and dynamic workers.”

The editorial appeared a day after the minister of health care, Sergei P. Burenkov, was abruptly removed from his post at age 63. A few days earlier Pravda had run an article declaring that “our health care system is sick” and alleging that incompetence, corruption and mismanagement were widespread.

Grigory I. Vashchenko, the minister of trade, was dismissed last week, following criticism that stores were not fulfilling their sales quotas and also following an effort to revive vodka sales despite Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign.

Heavy-Handed Censorship

Another long-serving bureaucrat, Chairman Fillip T. Yermash of the state-run motion picture industry, was removed after many accusations of heavy-handed film censorship.

Several newspaper articles have gone even further, attacking bureaucrats as perpetuating shortages of consumer goods to preserve their own power to allocate products in short supply.

The Literary Gazette, for example, charged that the Ministry for Meat and Milk Production deliberately sabotaged a poultry-processing firm set up under Gorbachev’s new economic policy.

The new firm, the newspaper said, bypassed the ministry by raising its own chickens and delivering them directly to city stores. When the firm asked that the ministry be stopped from collecting 18 million rubles a year (about $26 million) for wholesaler services no longer needed, the officials responded by halting shipments of the firm’s frozen poultry for nearly a month, the newspaper charged.

As a result, the paper went on, the firm incurred huge losses, and city dwellers waited in vain for the chickens.

‘Supreme and Omnipotent’

“The goal of a bureaucrat is diametrically opposed to our own,” the newspaper said. “He needs shortages everywhere. Then he will be signing authorizations, enforcing strict compliance with quotas, etc. Then he will be supreme and omnipotent.”

A similar attack on the restrictions imposed by government agencies was carried by Izvestia, the official government newspaper.

The article appeared under the headline “Who Gave Them the Power To Say No?” and cited a long list of what it called senseless prohibitions.

In the past, it said, villagers were not allowed to travel to cities; city workers could not switch jobs; women were barred from wearing mini-skirts, and men were forbidden to wear tight pants--and then told not to wear loose pants.

“This passion for saying no is still too attractive and appealing for some people,” Izvestia said.

‘Who Is the Worse?’

Soviet citizens now listen to records, read books and see films that used to be banned, the article said, and added, “Who is the worse for it?” The bureaucrats who made the rules were the ones who benefited from them, the paper said.

“In the thick forest of taboos and vetoes, a lot of guardians, enforcers and controllers graze and grow sleek,” the article said. “Restrictions and prohibitions are piled on leaders in the economic and social sphere alike.”

A common saying outside Moscow, Izvestia said, is that “the horse and the cart are here, but the reins are pulled from central headquarters.”

According to the paper, the chairman of the City Council in a city of 70,000 people does not have the power to install a public toilet at the railroad station but must wait years before it can be authorized in a capital construction budget.

Bureaucratic Viewpoint

Stores cannot reduce prices on fruit even if it’s spoiling, the article said, adding: “From the bureaucratic point of view, it’s much better that apples rot than be sold at half price. Then, it’s official.”

Other rules forbid digging a basement more than 1.9 meters (about six feet) deep, and prohibit customers from trying on gloves before they are bought, the article said.

In addition to economic losses, Izvestia went on, the habit of saying no discourages the innovation and enterprise that Gorbachev is trying to promote.

The great number of restrictions, it said, leads inevitably to corruption of officials, who are persuaded to make exceptions to the rules.