Cadres Assailed by Gorbachev on Pace of Reforms

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev scolded Communist Party officials Friday for using outdated methods and failing to work hard enough to assure the success of his economic reform program.

It was one of his harshest public appraisals of the party hierarchy since he came to power in March, 1985.

Even so, the Kremlin chief praised the party leadership for successfully launching the first stage of perestroika, or restructuring, by defining goals and preparing to turn plans into reality.

Appealing for unity in the wake of the ouster of Moscow city party boss Boris N. Yeltsin last week in a controversy over the pace of reform, Gorbachev condemned both “conservatism” and “artificial avant-gardism” that he said threatened constructive changes.

He said it would take harder work and greater democratization efforts by the party to achieve radical changes in economic and social life.

“Let us put it bluntly,” he said. “We cannot be satisfied today with the level of activity of the party ranks, party bodies and party cadres. Even today, we can see both a certain lag and a certain contradiction between the demands of life and the standard of party work.”

“Many Communists must be brought out of a condition in which they move only too slowly to grasp the meaning of the processes under way,” he added. “I must say with regret that the elective party bodies have not yet ridden themselves of inertia, conservatism and over-organization.”

Gorbachev recalled that one of the leaders of the Moscow city party chided his colleagues for not speaking out earlier against Yeltsin, whom Gorbachev had accused of making serious political mistakes, and the city boss had publicly complained about the slow pace of reform. But, rather than calling for a wider purge, Gorbachev said, party leaders should try to help people learn how to work in new ways.

“On the other hand, if you are convinced that a person does not accept new ways, rejects democratization and a new economic mechanism, it is necessary to part company with him, and decisively so,” Gorbachev added.

‘Parasitic Attitudes’

“People will not follow those leaders whose promises are many but deeds are few, who act in an old way, cling to parasitic attitudes,” he continued.

Unless ordinary people feel that their situation is improving, he said, they will not give wholehearted support to the reforms.

In addressing the Secretariat and staff of the party’s Central Committee, Gorbachev urged greater cooperation with the Soviet press, saying that its role in perestroika “can hardly be overestimated.”

“We must work with journalists more,” he said. “It was simpler in the past, since it is easier to ban than to allow. . . . Let us work together. the press is part of the cause of the party, of the whole people, so let us treat it accordingly.”

Gorbachev’s remarks on the media differed from those of Yegor K. Ligachev, the No. 2 man in the Kremlin, who has been critical of newspapers for focusing too much on the negative side of Soviet history.

Conflict Over Pace of Reform

It was Ligachev with whom Yeltsin quarreled about the pace of perestroika at a meeting of the party Central Committee last month, apparently in a manner so heated that they led to Yeltsin’s ouster last week amid charges that he had acted out of personal ambition and political immaturity.

In his closing remarks to the meeting, reported by the news agency Tass, Gorbachev again seemed to be alluding to the Yeltsin affair.

“We know that more than once in the past, the personal traits of individual leaders, their inability or insufficient maturity and responsibility, and their failure to realize the role of a leader, result in serious contradictions and a conflict with the party,” he said. “In such cases, personal ambitions, if they are inordinate and camouflaged with pseudo-revolutionary phrases and poses . . . do much harm to the common cause.

“Today we know also . . . that conservatism and artificial avant-gardism, no matter how different their rhetoric, in the long run inevitably band together.”