Conference Closes : Party Backs Gorbachev’s Call for Change

Mikhail S. Gorbachev won Communist Party backing Friday for sweeping changes that would limit top officials to 10 years in office and create a stronger presidency that he might assume while remaining party chief.

The four-day national conference of 5,000 party members, the first since 1941, closed with Gorbachev saying that the reforms would point the way to a new “democratic image of socialism.”

He also found himself in the middle of an open feud between the No. 2 Kremlin leader, Yegor K. Ligachev, and former Moscow party chief Boris N. Yeltsin, which was played out on television and gave millions of viewers an unprecedented look at cracks in the party monolith.

Alexander Lukyanov, secretary of the party Central Committee, told a late-night news briefing that several resolutions were approved.

Two 5-Year Terms

He said the conference backed Gorbachev’s proposals to allow elected party officials only two five-year terms, with no exceptions.

He also said the new, stronger presidency would have the powers Gorbachev requested to settle matters of foreign policy and head the Defense Council, a position traditionally held by the party chief.

Also approved was Gorbachev’s controversial recommendation that party leaders lead the corresponding legislatures, all the way up to combining the job of president and party general secretary. That could enable Gorbachev to take an even firmer grip on power by assuming a stronger presidency while retaining the party leadership.

Georgy Razumovsky, a non-voting member of the ruling Politburo, said 209 delegates voted against that provision, an extremely rare show of dissent in the party.

An amendment calling for the party newspaper Pravda to be taken away from the policy-making Central Committee and turned over to the party as a whole received only 56 votes, said Tass, the official news agency.

Assessing the results of the conference just before it closed late Friday night, Gorbachev said: “Through democratization, economic reform and changes in the political system we will make perestroika irreversible. We will reach a fundamentally new state of our society, a new humane and democratic image of socialism.”

Perestroika , or restructuring, is the name Gorbachev has given the ambitious reform program on which he embarked soon after gaining the leadership in March, 1985.

In his final address, Gorbachev also proposed a final break with the Stalinist past by building a monument in Moscow to the dictator’s millions of victims and said elections for stronger local and national legislatures should be held next spring.

Long, Stormy Debate

Tass said Gorbachev presided over an “unusually stormy and long” debate on resolutions. That reflected the extraordinary spirit of open criticism permitted during the meeting.

The main drama on the final day was provided by the bitter personal dispute between Ligachev and Yeltsin. Gorbachev devoted much of his final 40-minute speech to a critique of Yeltsin’s work as Moscow party chief before his dismissal last November.

Yeltsin appealed to the conference to absolve him of any blame for accusing entrenched bureaucracy of slowing down the pace of reform. That criticism cost him his Moscow job and his non-voting seat on the Politburo.

He has identified Ligachev in foreign television interviews as the official most responsible for holding up reforms and called on him to resign.

Ligachev’s Rebuttal

Ligachev thundered back in a speech Friday that he made his region self-sufficient in food while working as a party leader in Siberia, but “the district where you, Boris, worked for nine years now has rationing of food.”

Gorbachev broke in at one point to quiet delegates and make sure that Yeltsin could finish his address. As he closed the session he gave a lengthy account of Yeltsin’s failings.

Resolutions adopted by the conference were not published immediately but Razumovsky, a Gorbachev protege, told the news conference that the Soviet leader has won his fight to reform the political system.

About the dissenting votes, Razumovsky said: “Nothing of the kind has happened for a long time at a similar forum.”

Call for Elections

In his closing remarks, Gorbachev said the Central Committee and other party organs should settle questions of political reform on an urgent basis so a fall session of the Supreme Soviet can begin to implement it. He said elections for the new legislatures could be held next April.

Referring to his proposals for a new 2,250-member Chamber of People’s Deputies, a smaller and more active Supreme Soviet, and for presidential powers over defense and foreign policy, he said: “The conference will continue living in the society, in the discussions in the society, but now we know how we must transform the political system.”

Stalin has become the object of increasingly sharp criticism since Gorbachev’s glasnost policy of greater openness made such comment possible, but the decision to build a monument to his victims is the most definitive step Soviet authorities have taken to repudiate him.

“I think we must agree to this, and such a monument must be constructed in Moscow,” Gorbachev said. “This would be an honest step, and it will be supported by the entire Soviet people.”