Gorbachev Denies He’s Too Powerful : Soviet President Attempts to Dispel Critical Rumors

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today denied he was hungry for power and told members of the new Congress that he is in no danger of being removed from office or assassinated.

Gorbachev was reacting to criticism from some deputies that for one man to be both president of the Congress and chief of the Communist Party makes him too powerful. “I categorically reject the hints” that “I am trying to concentrate power in my own hands,” he said.

And acknowledging persistent rumors he said he heard from deputies, Gorbachev told the final session of the Congress of People’s Deputies that there was “no danger of a coup or anything like that.”

“Let’s end these rumors” he told the nationally broadcast session. “In four years I have already died seven times, and my family was killed three times.”

‘The Biggest Event’

Gorbachev told the 2,250 deputies that the Congress “can be considered the biggest event in the history of the Soviet state.”

The two-week session marked the first time in seven decades the Kremlin has permitted open debate by popularly elected representatives, and it produced outspoken criticism of the government, the Communist Party, Gorbachev and his efforts to deal with the nation’s economic problems.

Gorbachev said he understood the general dissatisfaction expressed by the deputies, but he claimed that the session marked a new stage of perestroika, his program to modernize Soviet society.

Maverick Communist Boris N. Yeltsin and others told the Congress that Gorbachev was accumulating too much power. Yeltsin said last week that the “extraordinary powers” Gorbachev had been given in the political overhaul that created the Congress and a stronger presidency could lead to a “new dictatorship.”

‘Alien to Me’

“This is alien to me, to my views, my outlook and my character,” Gorbachev said. “I, as general secretary and president, have no other policy than perestroika, democratization and glasnost. In this, I see the point of my life and my work.”

Also today, Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov told the Congress that the Soviet Union has a foreign debt of nearly $52 billion. It was the first time the debt figure was officially disclosed.

He said the amount of the debt explains why the government should not borrow more from Western sources to import more consumer goods.

A Western diplomat said the debt figure of 34 billion rubles, which amounts to $51.9 billion at the official exchange rate, is about what foreign analysts estimated, but the long-secretive Soviet Union has never acknowledged it.