Gorbachev’s Plan Fiercely Attacked; Meeting Extended : Soviet Union: Party hard-liners call leader muddled in his thinking. But the Central Committee is expected to endorse his platform at the crucial session.

Staunch conservatives in the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party on Tuesday attacked with vehemence and venom President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s proposals for greater democracy, forcing the party’s Central Committee to extend for another day its crucial meeting on transformation of the country’s political system.

Party hard-liners, in a fierce onslaught against a plan that would end the party’s domination of every aspect of government, economic management and public life, denounced Gorbachev as muddled in his thinking and incompetent in his leadership of the country. They blamed him for the deepening crisis here and called for a halt to the reforms.

But Gorbachev’s liberal supporters quickly rallied to him, and radicals also spoke against the conservatives, though they want even more sweeping reforms and regard the present proposals as compromises and half-measures.

After two days of emotional, sometimes tumultuous debate, a 60-member commission late Tuesday began considering the proposed amendments to a new party platform, and the Central Committee is expected to endorse the amended program today at a concluding session in the Kremlin.

“The debate has been tougher than any I have ever heard,” one Central Committee member, a Gorbachev supporter, said wearily Tuesday evening. “The conservatives know this is the end for them, and they are going to fight right through the vote. The fate of the nation is at stake.

“But they are also fighting for their political lives, even though they know the country as a whole is against them, and some sincerely do believe that everything they hold sacred is about to be destroyed. These are dramatic times.”

So deep and striking were the divisions in the debate, which had begun on Monday, that the party on Tuesday evening seemed quite close to an open split on the basic issue of the reform of the country’s political and economic system. Several participants spoke pensively about the growing fissures in the party that has led the Soviet Union for more than 70 years.

“When we said ‘yes’ to a multiparty system, it was with the expectation we would survive and dominate and be invigorated by a little competition,” another Central Committee member said. “Now, we have to think, quite seriously, about there being not one but two, or three even, Communist parties, or three tendencies within one party, plus separate but allied parties. . . . This is a very big step for us.”

But even conservatives appeared to have accepted Gorbachev’s most fundamental reform--abolition of the party’s constitutional monopoly on power and its consequence, development of a multi-party political system.

“Everyone thinks, unanimously, that it has become obsolete,” Vladimir P. Anischev, a Central Committee member, told journalists as he left the Kremlin. “This provision in the constitution has no meaning.”

What is being so hotly contested, according to the accounts of the official Soviet news agency Tass of the closed-door debate as well as by those committee members who emerged from the Kremlin on foot to talk with waiting reporters, is the underlying philosophy of the whole reform effort, known as perestroika, and the way in which it has been implemented.

And here the political battlefront between conservatives and liberals, although all avowed supporters of perestroika, is quite clear.

In less than five years, perestroika “has thrown the country into the vortex of crisis and led it to the line where we have come face to face with an orgy of anarchy,” Vladimir Brovikov, the Soviet ambassador to Poland and a leading party official under the late President Leonid I. Brezhnev, declared in an attack that set the tone for the conservative assault.

“It has become fashionable to blame all our disasters on the past, but what we are facing now is not the result of yesterday’s stagnation but of perestroika, “ Brovikov continued in an accusation that found great resonance Tuesday among other conservatives.

“Our tragedy is that we cannot abandon a single man’s power in the state and the party. We run things on impulse, incompetently, without farsightedness and caring not so much about the mood of the motherland but about other, maybe more personal ambitions.”

Brovikov, voicing the widespread conservative complaint that Gorbachev’s reforms have brought “social anarchy, told the meeting: “Discipline without democracy can survive, but democracy without discipline is unthinkable. It will give birth to social and political chaos.”

Boris Gidaspov, the new Leningrad party leader, who has emerged as a new conservative challenger to Gorbachev’s leadership, also criticized the proposed party platform, which will become its basic policy statement when adopted. He charged that it does little to stabilize the country and re-establish order.

“The degree of control of the state is falling rapidly, and ministries are in complete torpor,” Gidaspov said, according to Tass. The party is being “methodically removed from guidance” of the government, the economy and society, he complained.

In a direct challenge to Gorbachev, Gidaspov proposed that the party congress--first scheduled for 1991, then for this October, now for June or July--be brought forward to April to decide not just on the party’s direction, but also on its leadership.

(The new date for the party congress, certain to be a political watershed, may require postponement of the U.S.-Soviet summit, which was scheduled for late June or early July in Washington. While Soviet officials speculate that Gorbachev might like to move from a meeting with President Bush to the party congress, they doubt that he could spare the time for such a summit and the preparation it requires.)

Yegor K. Ligachev, the senior member of the party’s ruling Politburo, who has become the voice of conservatism within the leadership, defended perestroika --”There is no alternative to it, there has not been and there will not be one,” he declared. But he sharply criticized its implementation, blaming the party and government leadership.

“The people have their claims on the ruling party not only for the past, but also for the errors of perestroika, “ Ligachev declared in a speech that appeared from the reported applause of other participants to capture the mood of the meeting: determination to proceed with reforms balanced by a critical reappraisal of perestroika.

Describing the rampant inflation, the fiscal chaos and the collapsing Soviet economy, Ligachev blamed repeated “blunders” by the Politburo and the government, far weaker discipline and a proclivity to debate rather than act.

Ligachev firmly restated his opposition to the introduction of private enterprise in a mixed economy, proposing that it be put to a referendum if sentiment in the party is for it. But at the same time he argued for price and monetary reforms and new tax legislation.

However, he also expressed fears that the country is now seriously threatened by “nationalist, separatist and anti-socialist forces” unleashed by the reforms. “Destructive forces are threatening our society with chaos and collapse, moral and physical terror,” he said, again to the applause of many others at the meeting.

Other Politburo members, speaking as the tide of the debate flowed in favor of Gorbachev’s reforms, called for endorsement of the new party platform as a major step in the transition toward a “humane, democratic socialism,” as Gorbachev has summed up the proposals.

Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Gorbachev should he be forced from power by conservatives, fully supported the party leader’s reform proposals.

The multi-party political system envisioned in Gorbachev’s report already exists in fact, Ryzhkov said, citing the rapidly emerging political groupings in the country and within the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national legislature, and the Supreme Soviet, or Parliament.

What the party must do now, Ryzhkov said, is “clearly define its stand on this extremely urgent issue, which could change the entire historical development of Soviet society.” The party, he said, has a choice of working with other political and social groups--or finding itself increasingly irrelevant and thus impotent.

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister and one of Gorbachev’s closest associates, and Vadim A. Medvedev, the party secretary for ideology, argued vigorously for a stronger presidency, as outlined in the platform, so that Gorbachev can push through the changes the country needs.

Medvedev, emerging from the lengthy meeting Tuesday, predicted in an interview with Reuters news agency that the platform that will be approved today will “provide for radical and consistent measures furthering perestroika. “ The committee “must mark a sharp turn in the way the party works,” he said, if the party is to re-establish itself in Soviet society.

As other Central Committee members joined the debate in support of the proposals, and of Gorbachev as party leader, the mood in the Gorbachev camp brightened.

“We are speaking about the future of the country and ways out of the current crisis,” Indrek Toome, the prime minister of the Estonian republic, told reporters as he left the session. “The differences among us are very clear and often very sharp.

“A large group of people were trying at the outset to curtail the reforms and pull the country back to the old administrative-command system, but fortunately this is not prevailing. And, unlike in previous party plenums, I am quite optimistic about the outcome.”

KREMLIN STRUCTURE

The Communist Party, through the party Politburo, is the effective ruler of the country, although there is also a parallel government apparatus. Since 1917, when the Communist Party seized power, it has had a political monopoly. COMMUNIST PARTY POLITBURO--Headed by General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Politburo is the supremepolicy and decision-making body of the party. Members usually meet once a week to make key decisions in foreign and domestic policies. Politburo is now made up of 12 full voting members and 7 non-voting members. CENTRAL COMMITTEE--With about 240 members, the Central Committee usually endorses new policy provisions handed down from the Politburo. Central Committee meets just a few times a year and elects the party general secretary and members of the Politburo. PARTY CONGRESS--Meets about every five years and elects members of the Central Committee and rules on major policy positions. There are as many as 5,000 members. SOVIET GOVERNMENT PRESIDENT--Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He has responsibility over defense and foreign policy and power to name the prime minister. SUPREME SOVIET--Made up of as many as 550 members. The Supreme Soviet is the nation’s full-time legislative body. The Supreme Soviet consists of two chambers of equal standing. Members hold real power to pass the nation’s budget and other laws. CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES--In 1989, 1,500 members were elected to the new 2,250-member Congress, which debates and enacts major legislation. The other 750 delegates are members of the Communist Party or other “public organizations.” As one of its duties, the Congress elects the Supreme Soviet from among its members.