Candidate for Culture Post Wants to Cut Its Authority

After a five-month search, Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov on Thursday put forward a candidate for one of the tougher posts in the Soviet government--minister of culture.

Nikolai Gubenko, one of the Soviet Union’s leading actors and the director of Moscow’s Taganka Theater, said he agreed to accept the job only if he could sharply curtail his ministry’s authority to control the arts.

“The minister’s basic task is to create a climate favorable for creative work,” Gubenko told members of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature. “The ministry should not be in a position of approving anything or banning, prohibiting or taking control of anything.

“It should express the interests of the creative intelligentsia, and it should be the spiritual center of cultural life in the country. . . ,” he said.

But Gubenko, who accepted the job that virtually no one else would attempt because of the conflicting currents in Soviet arts today, made few promises as he was questioned by members of the Supreme Soviet’s committees on cultural affairs.

“It is possible to pull Soviet culture out of its current crisis,” he said, “but it is pointless to expect decisive changes in the near future because the causes of such a situation are very complex. . . .”

And he warned both the lawmakers and the government that he intends to remain active in the theater. “If I am approved as minister, I shall not give up acting at the Taganka,” he said.

Gubenko, 48, won unanimous approval of the committee members reviewing his credentials for the job and his program, which starts with the abolition of censorship and legal protection for writers, artists and musicians from arbitrary official actions.

The minister’s post has been vacant since deputies rejected the nomination of Vasily G. Zakharov, who had served as minister for three years but had come to be regarded as a cultural policeman.

One of the most difficult tasks he will face, Gubenko acknowledged, will be encouraging ethnic cultural traditions through the highly centralized ministry.