Party Strongly Backs Gorbachev on Reform : Presumed Rift Within Leadership Seen Healed as Ligachev, a Critic, Makes Announcement

The Soviet Communist Party on Monday gave Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the party’s general secretary, a far-reaching mandate to pursue his policies for the country’s radical political, economic and social transformation despite widespread opposition within the party’s own ranks.

Yegor K. Ligachev, the party’s chief ideologist and an occasional critic of the scope and speed of Gorbachev’s reforms, said after a two-hour meeting of the party’s policy-making Central Committee that it had adopted the Gorbachev program with its sweeping commitment to change.

“Important decisions were made,” Ligachev declared, referring to plans to convene a special party conference beginning June 28 to map a reform strategy that will carry the country into the 21st Century while accelerating its political and economic restructuring.

Because Ligachev made the announcement, the assumed split within the leadership over reforms appeared to have been healed, and the conservative opposition to Gorbachev was left without a significant power base, a leader or a spokesman.

In terms of Kremlin politics, Gorbachev seemed to have won a particularly significant victory--one that could determine the fate of his reforms and, eventually, the future of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev, in an interview last week with editors of the Washington Post and Newsweek, had left little doubt of his intention to firmly establish his authority within the party’s ruling Politburo, the Central Committee and the whole power structure. But he had acknowledged widespread “resistance” from those doubting the wisdom of his course and others opposed to the speed of change.

“We were conducting serious work,” Ligachev remarked, explaining his tardiness at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s nominal parliament, “and we had to finish. . . .

Party Endorsement

“The party endorsed the theses submitted by its Politburo and decided that they should be published for extensive discussion,” he told a committee of the Supreme Soviet after the Central Committee meeting.

“These theses make a thorough analysis of the experience of the party’s three years of work following the April, 1985, Central Committee plenum,” where Gorbachev first outlined his reforms, Ligachev said.

And, he added, “They put forward a whole number of important proposals concerning the realization of the policy of perestroika (restructuring) and renewal in our society, economic reform, broader democratization and glasnost ( political openness) and efforts to foster a healthy moral-political atmosphere.”

Although neither the decisions of the Central Committee meeting nor Gorbachev’s opening and closing speeches were published Monday evening, well-informed Soviet officials confidently interpreted the announcement as a significant victory for Gorbachev.

Unfolding Struggle

“The struggle is now unfolding about what kind of perestroika there should be,” Fyodor M. Burlatsky, a key Gorbachev adviser, said. “The real opponents of perestroika are people who believe society should remain as it is.”

The victory won by Gorbachev on Monday, the result of several months of sharp political infighting, belongs as much to a reformist group, well within the Communist Party hierarchy that describes itself as “revolutionary democrats,” as to Gorbachev’s formal supporters within the 300-member-plus Central Committee.

Burlatsky, vice president of the Soviet Assn. of Political Sciences and a member of those “revolutionary democrats” promoting reform, said Monday that a titanic struggle was under way between those supporting Gorbachev and a strong and significant minority opposed to his reforms.

“One of the key issues for perestroika and the whole process of democratization depends on inner-party democracy,” Burlatsky contended. “There is an acute struggle going on about alternative ways to develop our society.”

Considerable Opposition

Burlatsky and other Gorbachev supporters told journalists of a countrywide power struggle to press forward with reforms against considerable opposition within the party and government bureaucracy.

“A struggle, a shattering struggle for some, is unfolding within Soviet society,” Burlatsky said. “And although it is taking place on the basis of socialism, the notions of socialism are changing.”

But pro-Gorbachev intellectuals in Moscow--a key political constituency given its widespread influence--say their efforts to elect outspoken liberals, including Burlatsky himself, as delegates to the party conference are being frustrated by party regulations.

While describing the intense political debate here as “nothing dramatic . . . quite normal,” Burlatsky acknowledged that the whole Gorbachev reform program--a complex balancing of greater political freedom, increased democratization, new social liberties and broader economic rights for the individual and the cooperative--represented, in itself, a radical departure from previous political thinking.

Change in System

Tatyana Zaslavskaya, director of the Center for Study of Public Opinion and Social Economic Problems and another key Gorbachev adviser, went further to argue that the conflict now under way over courses of development will necessarily change the nature of the Soviet political system, the country’s policies and, inevitably, international relations.

But the initial focus is domestic, Zaslavskaya argued. “Our change through perestroika is just the beginning,” she said. “Perestroika has made only the first few steps, and our society is facing a very lengthy task of changes.”

She and other Gorbachev supporters were disappointed at the the pace of change, she said, but they blamed the dispersion of their backers throughout the country for a broad ring of opposition around what she called “the periphery” of politics here.