Moscow Plans Limited Economic Reform

Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, spurning the demands of progressives, offered an economic reform plan today that continues the ban on private property and generally maintains central control of the economy.

The 2,250-member Congress interrupted the premier’s nearly two-hour speech with applause only once. About half the deputies clapped when Ryzhkov declared that “the state is the owner of the means of production.”

Ryzhkov claimed he was offering a radical reform “for carrying the economy out of a crisis.” Food and consumer goods are in painfully short supply, and authorities now wonder if they will have enough fuel to heat Soviet apartments through the long winter.

Ryzhkov’s speech displeased progressives who pushed unsuccessfully Tuesday to have the Congress take up legislation to liberalize private property ownership and to consider lifting the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

Such deputies insist that Communist ideology must be divorced from economic policy if the country is to pull itself out of a grave economic crisis.

“Five years ago, we said it was a choice between five-year plans and perestroika, and unfortunately, it turns out the five-year plan has won,” said economist and parliamentarian Pavel Bunich in the lobby outside the snow-covered Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev successfully defeated attempts to address such broad ideological questions and got the agenda he wanted for the 10-day congress that opened Tuesday--a focus on the government’s economic reform program, known as perestroika.

But Ryzhkov’s speech appeared more conservative than the reform plan unveiled last month by his deputy, Leonid Abalkin. That plan called for urgent measures to lift state controls on some prices, sell off some unprofitable state enterprises and lay the groundwork for a type of stock market.

Ryzhkov spoke at length about developing a “socialist market” economy that the state would control, but he gave few details.

He offered no specific proposals on letting market forces dictate prices, which are artificially low because of state subsidies on many goods.

Because of consumer fears that easing price controls will result in exorbitant prices, the government will discuss compensation for price increases beginning next year and only afterward draft the reform, he said.

The premier also said the government will begin relying less on centralized planning in a second stage of reform beginning in 1993.