New Laws to Mark Radical Soviet Shift : Party to Yield Much Power to Government, Economic Enterprises

A vast complex of new laws is being readied here as the Soviet Communist Party prepares to yield much of its direct authority to government bodies and economic enterprises in an extraordinary retreat from power.

At a press conference Sunday, Deputy Justice Minister Mikhail P. Vyshinsky used these words to describe the undertaking: “A revolution is taking place here. Not everyone realizes this, but that is what it is--a revolution.”

For the 70 years that the party has ruled the country, its decisions have been law, and party policies have been the legal basis for all government actions. Now, in one of the most fundamental reforms advocated by party General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet Union is to become a state based on laws enacted by national and local legislatures, upheld by the government and enforced by the courts.

No Longer Above the Law

As senior Soviet officials see it, no longer will the order of a party secretary alone decide any issue; no longer will decrees from the party’s policy-making Central Committee be treated as national legislation, and no longer will the party be above the law.

To guide this new “revolution,” which will be the focus of a special party conference here this week, Vyshinsky said that scores of laws are being drafted to underpin the economic reforms alone.

These laws will govern the planning process, will give enterprises the legal certainty they need to do business, will encourage development of market forces and will give a legal structure to commercial contracts, banking transactions and retail sales.

More legislation will be needed, Vyshinsky said, to regulate social life, including laws governing education, the press, environmental protection, the preservation of historical and cultural monuments and family welfare, as the party withdraws from formally managing all these activities and more.

Permitted if Not Banned

The principle of the new laws, he added, will be that whatever is not specifically banned is permitted--a reversal of past Soviet practice allowing only those actions specially permitted by law, regulations or party decisions.

“When this method becomes the main one in social life, the code of Soviet laws will be turned from a code of prohibitions into a code of people’s freedoms,” he said.

The country’s criminal code will also be substantially revised, Vyshinsky said, with many crimes, notably those for “anti-Soviet” activities, to be taken off the statute books or the penalties for them significantly reduced.

“People will want to know what their rights are, what their responsibilities are and what guarantees they have of free operation,” he said, “and all this must be done by legislation that can be interpreted and upheld by the courts. This, for us, is new.”

But the most politically far-reaching legislation will be that defining the role of the party, its authority, its responsibilities and its limitations as well as companion laws enlarging the powers of elected bodies.

Party to Remain Guiding Force

“We have debated a lot about legislation that would place the party within the Soviet system, rather than above it,” Vyshinsky said. “To my mind, the party must remain the leading, guiding force of our society, but its role must be carried out through political means in the future.

“There should be a legal act therefore that defines the role of the party . . . and we must ensure that all party organs work within the limits placed on them by law. We must make the party an organization that acts only in ways defined by law.”

“This program of legislation,” he added, “will guarantee the irreversibility of perestroika (the policy of restructuring ), and it will be discussed and put into practice in the shortest possible time.”

Another top official, Alexander Y. Sukharev, the country’s procurator general, commented in a weekend interview with the government newspaper Izvestia that the philosophy behind all the new laws will be to uphold the rights of people to carry out whatever activities are not harmful to society rather than to place further restrictions on them.

While most people here see the law as “constraining and burdensome,” the government wants to “give priority to overcoming ignorance and cutting red tape and to encouraging new, resonable economic ventures,” Sukharev said. “We are building a legal socialist state and placing the well-being and freedom of the individual at the center of attention.

‘Ethical Legal Climate’

“The state should ensure their legal guarantees, but only society itself can form an ethical legal climate. . . ,” he added. “While striving for greater personal freedom, one should not forget about the interests of others.”

The crux of the change, as Vyshinsky and other senior Soviet officials explained it, is a radically different perception of the Communist Party’s proper role: the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917 believed that their successful revolution gave them the full authority, moral and political, to rule, and thus the party began to govern directly with its decisions given the force of law on the assumption that they represented the “democratic will” of the people.

For decades, as it administered this vast and complex country, the Communist Party amassed more and more power, but it has now concluded that this centralization of authority left little room for individual creativity or responsibility and thus stifled the initiative and spontaneity needed for development.

The Bolsheviks’ successors in the Soviet leadership today are persuaded that the party should act politically but leave the direct administration to government bodies and business enterprises, where party members would seek to influence decisions but no longer be able to make them unilaterally by claiming the party’s authority. This will be one focus of the special party conference, which Gorbachev will open Tuesday with a major policy speech.

The “theses” put forward by the party Central Committee for discussion at the conference call for the Soviet Union’s transformation into a “state of law” in which citizens will have the protection of clear legal guarantees and where no official of any level can escape responsibility for the abuse of power.

Seek a Flourishing Democracy

“What we are aiming for is the creation of a society where democracy, law and human freedom can flourish,” Vyshinsky told reporters, discussing the legal background to the forthcoming debates at the conference.

“Up until now, we have needed relatively few laws because party policies and party decisions covered almost everything,” Vyshinsky said. “As we strive to become a nation of laws, however, we find we have nowhere near enough laws to support the reforms we have undertaken. So, we are making an all-out effort to write and enact new legislation almost across the board, and it will be pushed through as a top government priority.”