Kremlin Meeting to Focus on Reforms, Ailing Economy

The Soviet Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee will meet today for what could prove to be a major review of its political and economic course amid mounting difficulties.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the party’s general secretary, is expected to open the meeting with a speech appraising the country’s severe economic problems and the resulting loss of confidence in the ability of his reform program, known as perestroika, to raise living standards.

Although Gorbachev is receiving sharply conflicting advice in the wide-open debate in the Soviet press between the party’s conservative and progressive wings on what action to take, virtually all commentators are agreed that he must take decisive, bold steps now to preserve popular confidence and save the reforms.

Gorbachev is confronted, on one hand, by rising anger over the shortages of food and consumer goods of all sorts and by the insistence of many liberal economists, sociologists and political scientists that this problem receive priority attention, whatever the cost, to underwrite the whole reform program.

But he is cautioned, on the other hand, by conservatives opposed to a headlong plunge into market economics, who see in further liberalization a loss of the party’s control of Soviet society and who fear that a multi-party system is the logical outcome of further political reforms.

However far apart on solutions, the debate has focused attention on a growing concern that the country is not being governed, that its components are being managed with varying degrees of competency but without a unifying strategy. Gorbachev is even implicitly criticized for generally seeking the middle course, and he is being told this time that he must be bold.

Gorbachev, who himself has spoken out in the debate several times recently, may feel compelled against the background of last month’s parliamentary elections--in which scores of senior party officials were defeated by young reformers, also party members but not apparatchiks --to reassert his leadership and to restate his vision of the country’s future.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov provided no details of the agenda in announcing the Central Committee session, except to say that a further meeting on ethnic issues is still planned for this summer.

Soviet political observers said they think that the most likely agenda for this meeting are the election results, the political and economic background to them and a series of decisions to move the country toward fundamental reform and, at the same time, to recover some of the lost enthusiasm for perestroika.

Gorbachev’s opening speech is likely to be followed by one day and possibly two of political debate, all behind closed doors, and then the adoption of a series of decisions or perhaps simply a communique.

Vadim A. Medvedev, the party secretary for ideology and a member of the ruling Politburo, set the tone for the meeting as he reviewed the country’s problems in a policy speech last week.

Despite four years of reforms, he said, “until now no tangible results in meeting the everyday needs of the people have been achieved.”

Without going into details, Medvedev suggested that the leadership will seek approval for a series of major economic reforms. These would include a redefinition of what constitutes property and ownership rights--a fundamental change for Soviet socialism to allow private enterprise--and the “vigorous use” of market forces within what will remain a planned economy.

While most political observers believe that these policy questions will be the focus of the meeting, it could also become a forum for high-stakes Kremlin politics in another showdown between party liberals and conservatives.