Gorbachev Outlines Major Farm Changes : Sees Far-Reaching Shifts as 1st Step to Broader Economic Reforms

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a speech broadcast Thursday, outlined far-reaching changes in the country’s agricultural policy as a first step toward broader economic reforms.

Breaking with more than 50 years of Soviet socialism, Gorbachev described the changes, including a return to family farming and other individual enterprises, as “a colossal turn” for the Soviet Union. He said the government is prepared to turn over farmland, livestock and other agricultural assets to new cooperatives, families and even individuals to manage on long-term contracts as if they themselves were the owners.

Although the initial moves would be made in agriculture, where a prolonged crisis has left the country unable to feed itself, Gorbachev said similar steps were envisaged in other moribund sectors of the economy, including many industries, where entrepreneurs would be allowed to operate.

“The forthcoming months will be the most active in all the years of perestroika (his reform program) in terms of switching to new forms of economic management,” he told a conference of the country’s top agricultural specialists Wednesday. “Our intention is to lead the entire economy along this road, starting with agriculture.”

Gorbachev, who consolidated his domestic political position only two weeks ago by dramatically realigning the Soviet leadership, is clearly continuing his drive to intensify and broaden perestroika and no longer feels held back by the criticism of his conservative opponents.

Ligachev Not There

Yegor K. Ligachev, the voice of conservatism within the ruling Politburo and Gorbachev’s principal rival, was not at the special conference, although he was named chairman of the party commission on agriculture in the shake-up Sept. 30.

His absence, already conspicuous, was underscored when Gorbachev remarked, to the amusement of conference participants, that although the country had begun its economic reforms more than three years ago, “we have been marking time because someone would not move further.”

Ligachev was not present, a government spokesman said, because he was on leave. “But that does not mean that when Comrade Ligachev is on leave, we should not handle agricultural issues,” the spokesman told newsmen.

Yet the policies broadly sketched by Gorbachev went much further, in both scope and tempo, than the cautious, step-by-step reforms advocated by Ligachev, and the lineup of other Politburo members and Central Committee officials flanking Gorbachev left no doubt about his greatly strengthened position.

Although the conference was held Wednesday, Gorbachev’s opening and closing speeches and excerpts from the remarks of other participants were broadcast only Thursday. The central radio and television service, however, carried a 2 1/2-hour special program that underscored the importance of the policy statements and sought to mobilize public support for the planned changes.

As the first full indication of Gorbachev’s plans following his consolidation of power, the conference appeared to indicate his intention to accelerate the reform process but stop short of the radical measures urged upon him by some members of the informal think tank of academic specialists who have advised him.

But his strengthened commitment to “rebuilding economic relations” opens the way for the complete overhaul of the whole economy, including extensive use of the market in place of central planning as a way of increasing productivity.

Gorbachev also reiterated his intention to accelerate the country’s political reforms, linking them to the economic changes.

“We should involve people in the political process so that all the main decisions will indeed be a product of the working people themselves rather than of the bureaucracy,” he said, arguing that the new types of economic organization would promote “a sweeping democratization . . . in society as a whole.”

While the Soviet Union’s 50,000 collective and state farms, a system established by dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s, would not be broken up, most apparently would become empty shells as their assets were effectively taken over by their members.

“By having torn people away from the land and from the means of production,” Gorbachev said, criticizing a half century of collectivized agriculture, “we have turned them from the masters of their land into hirelings.”

The key to all the country’s economic reforms, he stressed, must be the restoration of individual interest in production, whether in agriculture or industry.

“If a man wants to own land and create his own farm, we will not oppose it,” the Soviet president declared.

Colossal Losses

Past agricultural policy, he continued, had brought the country “colossal losses of strategic dimensions in changes in the character of rural life. Our whole society feels them. Although we are a rich country with a huge potential for agriculture, we have failed in providing an adequate supply of food.”

While criticizing more harshly than ever the results of the mass collectivization of agriculture, he carefully stopped short of condemning it outright, saying that years of mistakes had distorted the Communist Party’s original policies and nearly destroyed the country’s farmers.

“I believe we must preserve the socialist form of ownership,” Gorbachev told the meeting, “but open its full potential for activation of the human factor.”

The key element in the new agricultural policy will be the leasing to workers of state-owned and collective assets--perhaps for as long as 50 years--to manage on a profit-or-loss basis in order to re-establish “the economic relationship” between the quantity and quality of their work and their pay. Later, this will be included in the broader economic reforms.

“Let this become the rule: Money should be earned,” Gorbachev said, declaring an end to the decades-old Soviet practice of guaranteed jobs for all. “No one should receive any income if he does not produce, if he does not deliver. . . . If this policy is consistently put into practice, then everybody will start looking for new ways (to improve production and profits) on his own.”

Gorbachev said new laws would be enacted, supported by further government regulations, to implement the changes. The Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee will meet in February to take the changes further.

He also said agriculture will be a top investment priority in the next two five-year plans for the country’s economic development, although much more of the money will go for supporting infrastructure rather than for expanding the areas of cultivation.

“If everything produced at collective and state farms today were properly harvested, dispatched, transported, stored and processed and actually reached the shop counter,” he said, “it would add a minimum of 25% and by some estimates 40% to the food supply.”

In other developments, the Politburo warned the government to halt the price increases being introduced by many enterprises through replacing cheaper products with more expensive ones in defiance of price controls.