Party Proposes Radical Change in Soviet System

The Soviet Communist Party on Saturday proposed reforms that would transform the country’s highly centralized political and economic system into one based on federalism with extensive freedoms for its constituent republics and regions.

A crucial element in the broad reforms now under way here, the move will reshape the Soviet Union, according to the party’s policy document on ethnic issues, and it calls for extensive negotiations to reach a new constitutional formula for the country.

Although the new system is intended primarily to pull the Soviet Union out of its current crisis over inter-ethnic relations by giving the scores of non-Russian minorities greater autonomy, the break with the past will be so sharp--”a radical change,” in the words of the party statement--that other political, economic and social reforms will also be accelerated and expanded.

“Solving ethnic problems is crucial for perestroika and the future of the country,” the party statement declares. “Such a solution can and must be found only in the course of a revolutionary renewal of Soviet society. . . . Harmonization of inter-ethnic relations on a new basis is a supreme goal of the party’s nationalities policy.”

The policy statement, approved at last week’s meeting of the party’s Central Committee, calls for negotiations to reach a new balance of powers between the central government and the 15 constituent republics and proposes the drafting of a new “founding document” for the Soviet Union to replace the one adopted in 1922.

The negotiations would attempt to transfer into the political forum the sharp ethnic conflicts that have disrupted the country for the past 18 months and left nearly 300 people dead.

But their scope would reach far beyond resolution of the demands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians for the independence of their republics or of Armenians and Azerbaijanis over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In the process of resolving the relationship between the central government and the constituent republics, of the republics among themselves and of small minorities within this new framework, the process of political change would grow, Soviet commentators acknowledged in presenting the policy statement.

With a new constitution under discussion by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the new national assembly, these negotiations would give the new charter a focus much different from the present constitution.

Central Government’s Powers

The party proposes that the central government have the legislative power necessary to “define priorities in economic and political development” of the country as a whole, to provide for its security and defense, to conduct foreign policy and to undertake agreed tasks in the management of the economy, culture, science and human rights.

But the republics, largely formed on the basis of ethnic groups around the periphery of the old Russian Empire, would retain full authority in all matters except those that they agree to delegate to the central government. In the event of disputes, they would be able to appeal to a constitutional court.

The Soviet Union’s present pyramid of political power gives the central government--and the party leadership above it--virtually absolute authority on any issue. Although the constituent republics legally formed the Soviet Union, the working reality has been that they are creations of the Communist Party and of the central government and thus subservient to them.

The policy document stresses that each of the republics would maintain its “sovereignty and independence” under the new federal system, which would be based on their “voluntary association” to form the Soviet Union. The party says that it intends to move away from the current constitutional framework in which such rights exist--but only on paper.

The republics range in size from the giant Russian Republic with a population of 148 million to Armenia with 3.5 million and Estonia with only 1.6 million people. Each person would be a citizen of both his own republic and of the Soviet Union, a measure intended to answer criticism of past Soviet policy as “Russification” and forced assimilation.

The new policy would give the republics primary responsibility for their own economies, and it encourages them to move more boldly into market socialism. They would own the natural resources in their territory and would operate the industrial and commercial enterprises that are now state-owned. They would be required, however, to pursue economic efficiency, full employment and “social justice.”

The Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania won permission from the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, to move next year onto a new economic footing in which they will operate on a profit-and-loss basis independently of the huge central ministries that control most of the Soviet economy.

With their new authority envisioned in the party’s policy statement, the republics would be able to legalize the other political parties that are rapidly emerging and to adopt different governmental systems to replace the identical “Soviet socialist republic” models they now have.

They would also be able to maintain their own contacts with foreign countries and international organizations, according to the policy statement.

To protect minorities, the party plans to push for adoption of further constitutional guarantees of individual human rights and for greater authority for those autonomous regions where minority groups live. Religious observance, which will be protected by a new law on the freedom of conscience, would be able to play a far greater role than it has in the past in the republics and autonomous regions.

Small Ethnic Groups

In addition, the central government would continue its development efforts among the small ethnic groups of Siberia, the Arctic region and the Soviet Far East.

The party calls in its policy statement for the use of local languages as a basic right as well as for the protection of ethnic cultures, but it says that Russian should be kept as the national language countrywide for ease of communication.

On Saturday, the Central Asian republic of Kirghizia, following similar actions by Kazakhstan and Tadzhikistan, made its local language, Kirghiz, the republic’s official language. There were heated objections from Russians and others who wanted to retain Russian, now relegated to the status of “the language of inter-ethnic communication.”

In the country’s continuing unrest, three more people were reported killed and five injured in renewed clashes between ethnic Russians and Kazakhs in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. The official news agency Tass said that groups armed with sticks, stones and metal bars fought in the town of Semipalatinsk on Thursday.