Soviet Railway System Crippled by Strikes, Blockades, Mismanagement : Economy: Pravda calls the mounting transport crisis ‘an acute thrombosis’ that is having a serious impact on industrial production and the standard of living.

The Soviet railway system, hit by weeks of strikes and blockades and crippled by poor management, is nearing paralysis and endangering the entire economy.

Nikolai S. Konarev, the railways minister, said Monday that more than 500 trains with 25,000 fully laden cars are standing abandoned around the country because the freight yards are too clogged to receive them and some key junctures are too congested for other trains loaded with goods to pass through.

The congestion has left cargo piling up at the country’s seaports because there are not enough empty freight cars to haul it away, and additional thousands upon thousands of tons of freight are accumulating along the borders with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Assessing the mounting crisis on the railways, the country’s main means of transport, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda on Monday called it an “acute thrombosis . . . of the nation’s cardiovascular system” and warned that it already is having a serious impact on industrial production and living standards. “The fundamental rhythm on which the railways operate has suddenly snapped.”

The crisis, which has been building for nearly three months, is so severe that it now threatens perestroika, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of political, economic and social reforms, which depends on sustained economic growth for much of its long-term momentum.

The country’s economic growth has been meager this year--only 2.4% so far, compared to 4.7% in the first nine months of last year. The railways crisis now appears to be compounding the decline caused by the strikes in the coal industry over the summer, ethnic unrest in various parts of the country and other work stoppages.

Konarev has gone as far as to attribute the railways’ problems to political “sabotage,” a strong and dramatic term in the Soviet Union, and no one has disputed him.

Attempting to reassure the nation that the crisis can be reversed, however, he told the government newspaper Izvestia on Monday that 200 trains with 10,000 cars, which had also been standing for weeks on sidings around the country, are moving again and that the “situation is stabilizing” at key Baltic and Black Sea ports.

Konarev had told an emergency conference over the weekend of “alarming reports” from around the country. Some electrical power stations are running short of fuel, many steel mills do not have enough coke, some chemical plants are preparing to halt production of badly needed fertilizers and bread supplies have been cut--all because of the delays in railway transport.

The state prosecutor had been called in, Konarev said, and those found responsible for further delays would face criminal charges of neglecting their duty.

With coal deliveries to thermal power stations at only three-quarters of the normal volume, government officials are warning that power and heat may be rationed as early as December or January, as stockpiles, some less than half of what they normally are at the beginning of winter, are rapidly depleted.

To meet consumer demand and reassure the nation that the political and economic reforms are working, the government has spent more than $16 billion for consumer goods, mostly in Europe, but has been able to import only 15% of them because of the congested railways.

Moscow is also importing large amounts of food, including 500,000 tons of potatoes from Poland and East Germany, that get as far as the Soviet borders and sit. Trade officials said that 350,000 tons of grain are now sitting in Soviet ports waiting to be moved inland along with 94,000 tons of sugar and large quantities coffee, tea and rice.

The congestion is so bad in the freight yards in Byelorussia, Moldavia and the Ukraine where shipments arrive from Eastern Europe that 130 trains, all packed with food and consumer products, are being held up in Eastern Europe.

And, looking ahead to the harsh Russian winter, now just a few weeks away, the government reported that only a quarter of the country is prepared, largely because of the crisis on the railways.

This near-paralysis has set in at 68 of the railway system’s 158 key junctions, Pravda reported, and dispatchers have had only limited success in getting the trains moving again.

The main cause is the prolonged economic blockade of Armenia by neighboring southern Soviet republic of Azerbaijan in their dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of Christian Armenians in Muslim Azerbaijan. This has clogged all the lines leading to Armenia through Azerbaijan, the Northern Caucasus and even areas further away; thousands of cars with goods for Armenia are scattered around the country.

The railways were also hit hard by a strike, followed by a work slowdown, by ethnic Russian workers in Moldavia to protest the adoption there of legislation making Moldavian, a Latin-based language akin to Romanian, the state language of the republic.

A more fundamental cause, however, has been the increasing slowness of unloading freight cars and returning them to service. More than 178,000 cars are standing in freight yards waiting to be unloaded, according to railways officials, and in some places the backlog would take weeks to remove if no additional rail cars arrived.

Moscow, the country’s biggest railway junction, now has more than 1,700 cars waiting to be unloaded--three times the normal queue--and railways officials describe them as a virtual “wall” around the Soviet capital.

Konarev described as “simply colossal” the number of cars, often whole trains that are left parked on sidings miles from the freight yards.