Reform or Die, Gorbachev Says : 2nd Speech to Party Warns of Socialism’s Demise

Mikhail S. Gorbachev today made an impassioned appeal to delegates at a Communist Party conference to adopt his proposed overhaul of the Soviet system and said socialism will die if they don’t.

The Kremlin leader recalled that previous attempts in the 1950s and 1960s to reform the Soviet economy were “swallowed up” by the system. He said those failures made clear that this time there must be change in the political system itself.

It was the second time Gorbachev had taken the floor at the conference he called to assess his 3-year-old reform program and set a course for the future.

In a 40-minute speech broadcast later on national television, Gorbachev told the 5,000 delegates, “Socialism, Lenin, that is the creative activity of the masses.”

Structural Overhaul Urged

“But that activity will die unless we reform the political system,” he said.

Earlier, a Communist Party official told delegates that some people believe party stalwarts like Andrei A. Gromyko are no longer fit to hold office because they can’t work under Gorbachev’s reforms.

The entire Soviet leadership watched as Vladimir I. Melnikov, party chief in the Komi region of Siberia, made the dramatic statement from the podium of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.

His remarks on the third day of the meeting of 5,000 Communist Party delegates were the first reported by state-run media in which top party figures were attacked by name.

Off-Limits to Press

Despite the freer climate created by the Kremlin campaign for glasnost, or openness, criticism of top leaders is still largely off-limits to the Soviet press.

Melnikov said restructuring of the party’s policy-making Central Committee is proceeding too slowly, the Tass press agency said in a summary of his remarks.

Both Communists and non-party members, Melnikov declared, have said that “people who in previous times actively conducted the policy of stagnation cannot now be on, or work in, central party or Soviet organs, in the period of reconstruction.”

‘Talking About Me?’

Tass said Gorbachev, sitting on the dais, broke in, saying: “Maybe you have some concrete suggestions? We’re sitting here and don’t know: ‘Is he talking about me, or somebody else?’ ”

“I was referring first of all to Comrade Solomentsev, and to Comrades Gromyko, Afanasyev, Arbatov,” Melnikov replied.

Mikhail S. Solomentsev, 74, and Gromyko, 78, are both members of the Politburo and have held seats on the Central Committee since the days of Nikita S. Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Pravda Editor Viktor Afanasyev and senior Kremlin adviser on the United States Georgy Arbatov both were appointed to their posts under the now effectively disgraced former leader Leonid I. Brezhnev.

Tass said a delegate identified only as Mamayev sent a note to the presidium that was read to delegates. It praised Gromyko as a man who “has popular respect and love.”

Central Committee official Georgy Kryuchkov, asked by reporters about reaction to Melnikov’s remarks, said there were no other immediate expressions of support for the men attacked by name. None of them spoke up immediately in their own defense, he said.

Gromyko served as foreign minister for 28 years and was shifted to the mostly ceremonial post of president in 1985.