Gorbachev Acts to Get Backers in Key Meeting

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, intervened Friday in the election of delegates to a special Communist Party conference later this month to ensure the inclusion of key liberal supporters of his reform program after they had been rejected by party bureaucrats.

The official Tass news agency, reporting the results of a vote by the Moscow party committee for conference delegates, said that a number of “prominent workers of science and culture” had been added to the list of candidates after a national controversy over their exclusion a week ago.

Gorbachev and other top party leaders participated in the meeting to reinforce their call that “partisans of perestroika ,” his program of political and economic restructuring, be chosen as delegates to the conference.

Fateful Session

Soviet officials say the special conference will decide the country’s future. Among the proposals to be discussed at the party conference, the first since 1941, are restricting all party and state officials to terms of no more than 10 years, transferring party powers to elected bodies and legal reform. All have been approved for discussion by the party’s Central Committee.

“The party has determined the main direction of work, the main avenue of perestroika-- democratization,” Gorbachev was quoted as saying, making clear his desire for the liberals’ election as conference delegates and his unhappiness at the bureaucratic takeover of the meeting.

“This is the core of everything that is now being done in our society. This is not just a formula, but a clear-cut action program. Its central element is the drawing of the people into all the processes of transformation.

“In these conditions, Communists should persist in learning to work in the very midst of the masses. This is not an easy task, but there is no other way leading to the attainment of perestroika’s goals.”

Most Delegates Picked

More than two-thirds of the 5,000 delegates have now been chosen, according to party sources, but most seem to be drawn from the party or government bureaucracy in precisely the places where Gorbachev wants fresh ideas and new energy.

And his participation in the Moscow meeting, taking charge of a faltering process, underscored his personal concern that the conservatives will frustrate the conference that he hopes will give him a major boost by packing it with the wrong type of delegates.

Last month, Gorbachev said that conference delegates should be active supporters of his drive for political, social and economic reform. He called for democratic selection of candidates, taking into account the views of the rank-and-file members.

Despite this appeal, middle-ranking bureaucrats succeeded in striking from delegate lists some of the most prominent supporters of reform, who had earlier been endorsed by low-ranking party bodies.

Among those who won last-minute endorsement were sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya, political economist Gavril Popov, editor Yegor Yakovlev, historian Yuri Afanasyev, economists Nikolai Shmelev and Leonid Abalkin, cinematographer Elem Klimov and playwright Mikhail Shatrov, according to Tass.

Bureaucratic Obstruction

All are regarded as strong supporters of perestroika and Gorbachev’s leadership, but were excluded from many nomination lists by party bureaucrats more committed to maintaining their power than to the country’s new policies.

Gorbachev’s speech ensured that Friday’s meeting had the power to reinstate people such as Zaslavskaya and Yakovlev, whom it was believed he hoped to bring into the party’s policy-making Central Committee.

Altogether, 319 candidates were approved by the Moscow party committee after long, vigorous debate over their personal merits and tough questioning about how they were nominated and elected in local districts, Tass said.

“Objections were raised to (some) nominations,” Tass reported. “A number of critical remarks were made with regard to some secretaries of district party committees, economic managers and men of letters.”