Soviet Reforms Bring Turmoil, Gorbachev Says

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged in a speech made public Tuesday that his ambitious reforms are meeting widespread resistance and have plunged the Soviet Union, even the Communist Party leadership, into political turmoil.

But Gorbachev, declaring his determination to press on, said that he will ask the national party conference next month to broaden and accelerate the reforms so that opponents will be unable to reverse the process.

Deplores ‘Conservatism’

In a fighting speech intended to galvanize his supporters, Gorbachev said that most of the opposition to the reforms stems from ingrained “conservatism,” a resistance to change at all levels of society and to the fear among many that he is leading the Soviet Union away from socialism.

Examining the opposition to the reforms, the party’s ruling Politburo concluded that “far from everybody was prepared to view the present situation correctly,” Gorbachev said. “We found veritable confusion in the minds of many people--workers, intellectuals and administrators alike. And, let us be blunt, not only on the ground level, but also on the top.”

Gorbachev, speaking to a meeting last weekend of the country’s top ideologists, editors and intellectuals, asserted that he has the Politburo’s full support despite recent speculation of serious divisions in the party leadership. The No. 2 man in the Soviet hierarchy, party ideologist Yegor K. Ligachev, is thought to want a more restrained approach to social and economic problems than does Gorbachev.

Gorbachev’s long speech, released late Tuesday by the official news agency Tass, will be published in the Soviet press today.

“Some people have indeed lost their bearings amid all these (reform) processes,” Gorbachev said in his fullest acknowledgement of the resistance to perestroika, as the political and economic reforms are known. “Some people have failed to keep their heads and panicked.

“And the panic--and this is very serious--has taken the form of asking, ‘Isn’t perestroika coming to mean the wrecking and rejection of the values of socialism, isn’t it giving rise to alien phenomena, isn’t it destabilizing society?’ All these questions are very serious, and I would not think that those who have panicked are irresponsible people or people opposed to perestroika. “

What he wants to do, Gorbachev emphasized, is to win over the doubters and critics rather than split the party and the country into pro-reform and anti-reform factions.

And, to reassure those worried about the political orthodoxy of the reforms, he again declared that, however sweeping the changes, they would all be undertaken “within the framework of the socialist choice.”

But socialism needs to be redefined, he argued, to bring out its “humanist potential.”

Change View of Socialism

“We should get rid, once and for all, of the view of socialism as if it were a leveling out, negating personality, of the notion of socialism as a certain minimum--the minimum of material benefits, the minimum of justice, the minimum of democracy,” he said.

Perestroika, now in its “boost phase,” must not be slowed at a time when the reforms should be gathering speed and spreading into new areas, Gorbachev continued, calling for the election of “active supporters of perestroika” to the special party conference in late June.

The scope of the reforms Gorbachev is pushing were clear from the changes he has made in the party leadership over the last three years. Two-thirds of the country’s government ministers are new, he said, along with more than 60% of the regional, city and district party and government leaders.

People nevertheless are growing impatient with the government and the party, he acknowledged, for they expected much more, much sooner from the reforms.

Although production has increased an average of about 4% in each of the past three years and economic efficiency has improved, there are still serious shortages of food, Gorbachev said, and much greater efforts are required.

Faster Results Sought

Sergei Vikulov, editor of the magazine Nash Sovremennik (Our Contemporary), told the meeting that, judging by the letters his journal and others received, people want to see faster results in their own lives from the reforms and are demanding that opposition to perestroika be quickly overcome.

But Sergei Zalygin, editor of the literary journal Novy Mir (New World), warned that not all of “those whom we describe as the mass of the people--the intellectuals, the working class, the peasantry--are delighted with perestroika. “

“It cannot be said that all is well with us, that success is assured,” Zalygin said. “I think that it is not. . . . It takes very serious steps to ensure success.”