Gorbachev Sets a Tough Timetable : To Challenge Foes of Reform at Central Committee Meeting

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, intent on maintaining the maximum momentum behind his reform drive, is setting a tough timetable for the top-to-bottom restructuring of the country’s political system over the coming year.

Armed with the broad endorsement of his reforms by the recent special Communist Party conference, Gorbachev will next assemble the party’s policy-making Central Committee, long a stronghold of his conservative critics, to push for full and rapid implementation of the changes.

Gorbachev, who emerged from the conference with greater power and clearly at the center of Soviet politics, is believed likely to use that meeting, now scheduled for late this month, to add supporters of his policies to the committee and force his critics on it into silence or even retirement.

“At the conference, Gorbachev showed that he was king of the castle,” said conference delegate Vitaly Korotich, the editor of the influential weekly magazine Ogonyok, assessing the jousting between the party’s liberal and conservative wings. “He showed increasing confidence as our leader. . . .”

‘No Ideological Program’

He added: “Those who oppose him can throw up dust and quietly try to hinder perestroika (the restructuring process) as much as they can. But they offer no ideological program. I do not believe they have any chance of success.”

A knowledgeable Soviet political analyst said: “The conference gave Gorbachev the authority he needed to deal with the conservatives, and that is clearly his intention. The Central Committee will officially discuss ‘the practical realization’ of the party conference’s decisions, and that must include organizational and personnel matters.”

‘Changes Are Coming’

He added: “Changes are coming. . . . Gorbachev wants to keep things moving. He wants to build the reforms into an irresistible force that will push forward relentlessly and gather speed all the time.”

Many of the delegates to the conference were chosen by provincial party organizations in which conservative views are strong. But none spoke out against the reform program, although some expressed concern at the breadth and pace of the reforms.

“It is extremely important not to evade pressing problems,” Yegor K. Ligachev, the party’s second-ranking official and the man liberals regard as the focus for conservative views within the Politburo, told the closing session of the conference. “Such problems must be resolved energetically, in novel ways, but without a mindless assault and very cautiously, always calculating the consequences.

“So, together with resolve, there must be--I repeat, there must be--caution. Folk wisdom says, not without reason, that before entering, think how you can get out of it,” he added.

Yet Gorbachev appears, from his first actions at a special Politburo meeting, not only to consider himself the clear winner at the party conference but also to have consolidated his power at a critically important point in his reform efforts.

Ideologically, he positioned himself between Ligachev and Boris N. Yeltsin, a radical reformer dropped from the Politburo in February. While he accepted significant compromises in the conference resolutions, most were to ensure the support of the broad center of the party and to strengthen its unity.

Politically, Gorbachev enhanced his position as the focus of the reform effort by opening the debate at the conference, guiding the delegates through it and then summing up the decisions. The overwhelming vote to proceed with reform is his mandate.

Image Diminished

His charismatic image may have been diminished by glimpses on nationwide television of a strong-willed, somewhat brusque and occasionally authoritarian leader. But he was also seen as energetic, quick-witted, self-confident and firmly in control.

So high is Gorbachev’s standing now that Ligachev, embroiled in a nasty quarrel with Yeltsin, tried to demonstrate his own political leadership by recalling how he and other old-timers in the Politburo had worked to ensure Gorbachev’s election as party general secretary three years ago.

“Ligachev trying to bask in Gorbachev’s popularity sums up the country’s political contours after the conference,” a senior Soviet political commentator argued. “And Gorbachev will need all the power that is implied . . . if he is to succeed against the bureaucrats in the party and government who are the real opponents of reforms.”

Process Accelerated

With typical energy, Gorbachev immediately began to expand and accelerate the reform process early this month. He scheduled the Central Committee plenum, established several task forces to deal with the many complaints on shortages of food and consumer goods and began to orchestrate implementation of the conference resolutions.

The Supreme Soviet, or Parliament, will be asked shortly to approve constitutional changes that will give it much greater powers. Under those changes, it will choose a new executive president--almost certainly Gorbachev--who will be given broad authority in domestic and foreign policy-making.

This would give Gorbachev a popular mandate as well as one from the party and free him from most of the constraints imposed by party conservatives, who have forced him into serious compromises, even at the recent party conference.

In the future, the presidential post would be filled by the reconstituted Supreme Soviet, with non-Communists as well as party members participating in a secret-ballot election. In addition, it would offer some protection against the sort of internal party coup in which Nikita S. Khrushchev, a reformer of a different era and style, was removed as party leader in 1964.

Controversial Proposal

But the presidential plan was one of the most controversial proposals that Gorbachev made, and the resolution adopted at the end of the conference said nothing about the powers of the new president.

“Gorbachev still faces a fight on this issue,” one conference delegate, a strong Gorbachev supporter, said recently. “Some of us oppose creation of such a strong post combining state powers and party authority, because the men after Gorbachev may well have dictatorial instincts. In this country, good czars tend to be followed by three or four bad czars. We have every reason to fear their abuse of these powers.”

Opposition to a third five-year term for top party and government officials was strong, and the idea was dropped in favor of a strict two-term limit, even for Gorbachev.

Further doubts were expressed during the conference over plans for the party to nominate its local leaders to head city, district and regional governing councils, known as soviets . Speakers at the conference split sharply as party bureaucrats--the apparatchiki --supported a change they saw preserving their power, while rank-and-file members, whether workers or farmers or managers, called for even greater decentralization.

More political skirmishing on this and other issues is likely as the constitutional amendments, an election law and other reform legislation are drafted and then debated by the Supreme Soviet, which in May--for the first time in memory--refused to approve a draft law as submitted by the government and insisted on major changes.