Soviet Delegates Report Loss of Faith in Leaders : Gorbachev Hears Plea for Early Voting to Oust Bureaucrats; Strikes Called ‘a Cry of Despair’

A nationally televised parliamentary debate Monday on two tumultuous weeks of national coal strikes turned into a resounding declaration of no confidence in government and Communist Party officials at virtually all levels.

Assembled to consider what Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev characterized as “perhaps the gravest test” of his 4 1/2 years in power, deputy after deputy rose to say that the people have lost faith in their leaders and are tired of promises.

Deputy Vladimir Lushnikov read a demand from striking miners in the northern Urals that the Soviet constitution be revised to eliminate the leading role it assigns to the Communist Party.

“This is not about a shortage of soap or sausage,” said Deputy Yuri Golik of Kemerovo, the center of a Siberian coal strike that at its peak idled 150,000 miners. “It’s much more serious. This is a cry of despair from the whole nation.”

Several deputies urged that scheduled elections for local administrative councils be moved forward in order to oust do-nothing bureaucrats they accused of being more interested in their own positions than in the welfare of their constituents.

One went further, urging that local council members nationwide be stripped of their powers immediately. Deputy Konstantin Lubenchenko said these officials were not elected but were appointed to their posts before the democratic reforms that have already transformed the Supreme Soviet, the national Parliament, and promise to do the same at the local level.

Gorbachev, who presided over the four-hour debate, sidestepped efforts to force a decision on moving up the local elections, arguing that this was up to the legislature in each of the country’s 15 constituent republics.

In his closing remarks, in which he seemed to be trying to avoid on-the-spot decisions in favor of referring controversial issues to committees, Gorbachev was forced several times to raise his voice in order to be heard over the grumbling from the benches.

Deputies complained that the Soviet work force has lost trust in the system so completely that only the personal intervention of either Gorbachev or Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov could reassure them.

“This is a very dangerous situation,” one said, “since these two men cannot look into the problems of every workplace.”

The situation testifies to a crisis “in the country, in the party, in culture, everywhere,” said Boris N. Yeltsin, a former Moscow party chief and one of the most radical official reformers. Gorbachev’s program of perestroika , or restructuring, has “failed to deliver on its promises, and people are getting tired of waiting,” Yeltsin said. “Trust in the existing chain of leadership is lost, and this is the most worrisome aspect of the situation.”

Yeltsin said that the revitalized Parliament has become “the only hope for the people, who are deluging us with cables and letters, who wait for us in the streets.”

“We cannot walk out of the hotel,” he said, “without immediately being encircled by an agitated crowd. This happens because people cannot find any help anywhere.”

Several speakers lashed out at the trade unions, which traditionally have been agencies to control workers rather than serve their interests.

“We must recognize that the official trade unions have lost their support,” a deputy from Latvia said. “If workers want to form independent unions, they must do it.”

Another deputy called for the dismissal of Mikhail I. Shchadov as minister of the coal industry.

Coal Miners’ Protest

The crisis began two weeks ago when miners in the Kuznetsk coal basin in western Siberia put down their tools in protest over a wide range of economic and social issues. They ultimately won the agreement of a special government commission to a 35-point program promising greater local control over the operations and finances of their mines. The agreement also calls for improved wages and guarantees stepped-up supplies of scarce food and other consumer goods to the region.

While those negotiations were under way, the strikes spread to several other sections of the country. At least 500,000 miners nationwide were reportedly off the job for at least part of the last two weeks, threatening chaos in such dependent industries as steel and electric power.

Gorbachev said Monday that most miners have finally gone back to work, although about half the mines in the crucial Donets basin in the Ukraine reportedly were still on strike late Monday, as were others elsewhere in the country.

Ryzhkov met later in the day with a delegation of Donets miners who had come to Moscow seeking top-level assurances that their demands also will be met.

Gorbachev said the coal strike has become “perhaps the gravest test in four years of perestroika .” Over the weekend he appealed to the miners by telegram and television to return to their jobs, and he warned again Monday that strikes constitute a mortal threat to reform.

“They will destroy this great thing, restructuring, that we have started,” he said.

Fear of Chain Reaction

Soviet authorities are particularly concerned that the coal strikes will trigger a chain reaction, particularly because the complaints raised by the miners are echoed in virtually every other segment of the Soviet economy. If anything, miners have been considered the aristocracy of the Soviet working class because of their relatively high wages.

While criticizing the strike as a tactic, Gorbachev put the primary blame for the miners’ protest on the authorities. The crisis has come about, he said, only because central and local authorities failed to react adequately to problems as they came up.

A major unanswered question is where the authorities are going to find the resources to deliver on their promises to the miners.

Deputy Premier Leonid I. Abalkin, a reform-minded economist, told reporters Monday that in reaching a settlement, “the priority has been given to political stability to ensure that there would be no further outbreak of labor difficulties.”

But he said that as an economist, he recognized that the settlement “will create economic victims, and someone will suffer.”

“It will mean simply not giving something to somebody else,” he said. “There are simply no reserves in the budget, given the current deficit.”