Gorbachev’s New Power ‘Dangerous,’ Sakharov Says

Human rights activist Andrei D. Sakharov on Tuesday criticized aspects of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s proposals for political reform as a “dangerous” return to centralization and said allowing one person to head both the Communist Party and the government was “just insanity.”

In his strongest criticism of the Soviet leadership since returning to Moscow from internal exile two years ago, Sakharov told a conference of Soviet and American scholars that there are dangerous “time bombs” in the proposed changes to the Soviet constitution published here last week that would shift control of day-to-day operations from the party to governmental bodies.

Although he has consistently supported Gorbachev’s reform programs, Sakharov said Gorbachev’s new double role as Communist Party chief and president is dangerous.

“A head of state with such powers in a country that does not have a multi-party system is just insanity,” Sakharov said. “This is practically boundless power. Today it is Gorbachev, but tomorrow it could be somebody else. There are no guarantees that some Stalinist will not succeed him.

“Once more, everything boils down to one person, and that is extremely dangerous for perestroika (restructuring) as a whole and for Gorbachev personally. This is an extremely important question, on which the fate of our country depends.”