Gorbachev to Boost Polish Reform Drive : Soviet Leader Due to Begin 4-Day Visit to Warsaw on Monday

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, fresh from the tumultuous Soviet Communist Party conference in Moscow last week, will begin a four-day trip to Poland on Monday, aimed at least in part at shoring up the drive for economic and political change in one of the Soviet Bloc’s most troubled countries.

The trip will conclude with a two-day meeting of leaders of the other six nations in the Warsaw Pact, some of whom were likely to have viewed the uniquely open proceedings in Moscow with misgivings.

The visit to Poland will be Gorbachev’s third since taking the party helm in Moscow in March, 1985. He will be hosted by one of his chief supporters in the Warsaw Pact, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, 65, whose efforts to reform the Polish economy have been met with resistance by a mistrustful public and a reluctant state bureaucracy.

East European reaction to the Moscow party meeting, at which longtime party officials were openly criticized, has been muted, even in Poland, where Soviet reform moves usually have been welcomed.

‘New Mode of Thinking’

A Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment this week on sensitive internal matters being discussed in Moscow, but he praised “the new mode of thinking about international affairs which is spreading in the Soviet Union.”

The reluctance of East Bloc commentators to discuss the notable openness of the Soviet conference suggests that few governments are yet ready to brook open criticism of their own party officials.

The only exception is Hungary, where Communist Party members in May voted to replace 76-year-old leader Janos Kadar with Karoly Grosz, 56, in an extraordinary party meeting that was even more frank in its discussions than the meeting in Moscow. The economic and political reforms in Hungary are more advanced than any in the East Bloc.

The Moscow conference is likely to have been most unnerving to the leaders of Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, whose response to Soviet reforms has ranged from open disdain to foot-dragging acceptance.

Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, 70, currently locked in a dispute with Hungary over his plan to raze villages of ethnic Hungarians in Romania as part of an ambitious resettlement plan, is the leader most obviously out of step with Moscow. Ceausescu presides over the most repressive government in the Soviet Bloc, and his relations with Gorbachev have been chilly from the beginning.

No Need for Reform Seen

East Germany’s Erich Honecker, 75, also has made clear that he sees no need for reform in his own country. Although East Germany has been more successful economically than its East Bloc neighbors, the country has witnessed an increase in political protest. Dissident calls for reform have had no impact on the Honecker government.

Czechoslovakia’s Milos Jakes, 66, installed last December to replace 75-year-old Gustav Husak, has given mostly lip service to ideas of economic reform. But he has made virtually no changes that suggest a loosening of a tightly controlled party apparatus in which open criticism of party officials remains nonexistent.

In Poland, Jaruzelski has taken pains to suggest that his own plans for odnowa (renewal) parallel Gorbachev’s concepts of perestroika (restructuring).

Jaruzelski’s renewal, however, has run into repeated problems, most recently in a round of labor unrest in April and May that resulted in a series of strikes unprecedented since August, 1980, when the now-banned independent trade union Solidarity was formed.

Jaruzelski now has launched a two-pronged effort to get his reform plans back on track. A diplomatic campaign has been opened to win Western support with lending agencies to help relieve Poland’s $39-billion international debt, with ranking architects of Poland’s economic reform scheme visiting both Paris and Washington in the last week.

Domestically, he has been trying to launch an “anti-crisis” council made up of intellectuals linked with the opposition and more liberal representatives of the government. The first meeting of the group was held last week. Little came from the session except an agreement to hold a further meeting.