Historic Soviet Reforms : Communists Back Rival Parties and Elected Presidents : Vote Gives Gorbachev a Smashing Triumph

The Communist Party that for decades swore its red tide would cover the globe bowed to a different revolution today and agreed to allow alternative political parties to compete for control of the Soviet Union.

The decision amounts to an acknowledgment that new political forces have taken root and that it is no longer possible or desirable to crush them with the repressive tactics of the past, which ranged from mass murders under dictator Josef Stalin to the dissident arrests preferred by Leonid I. Brezhnev.

Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev said the Central Committee proposed a real presidential system with a Cabinet, a radical concept for the Soviet Union.

“The plenum supported the idea of asking the people to approve the introduction of a presidential government in this country,” Yakovlev said. “That is to say, the president should be elected for a certain term and he and his Cabinet shall have full power.”

The stunning decision by the party’s Central Committee to give up the Communists’ constitutional monopoly on power was a triumph of political maneuvering by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He packed the meeting of the 249-member body with more than 700 other officials, many of them progressives who took the floor to demand radical reform.

In the end, the guests also were allowed to vote on the new party platform, said Svyatoslav Fyodorov, a famed eye surgeon and one of the participants. He spoke in an interview on Red Square.

“Article 6 will no longer be, there will be a multiparty system. There will be a normal democracy,” Fyodorov said, referring to the article in the Soviet Constitution that guarantees the Communists a leading role.

“We cannot rule out the emergence of new parties,” Politburo member Vitaly I. Vorotnikov said in remarks reported by Tass news agency. “But we Communists are not going to surrender our positions. Just as any party in the world, we shall be waging a struggle for our rights.”

For three days, Gorbachev’s draft platform was strongly criticized from both right and left at the Kremlin meeting. Radio Moscow said the Central Committee also agreed to advance the date of the next party Congress from October to no later than July. The Congress, the most powerful party body, is the only group empowered to choose a new Central Committee.

The Central Committee is considered by reformers to be the bastion of conservatives wary of Gorbachev’s reform program. The Congress would offer Gorbachev another chance to reform the committee to his liking.

Sources inside the Central Committee meeting said it would recommend to the Supreme Soviet parliament that it delete Article 6 of the constitution in the first step of a two-stage government process.

The Supreme Soviet could take up the issue at its next session beginning Feb. 14.

In either case, final authority for changing the constitution rests with the Supreme Soviet’s parent body, the Congress of People’s Deputies. At its last meeting in December, the Congress heeded Gorbachev’s plea for a delay and blocked an effort by reformers, led by Andrei D. Sakharov, to strike Article 6.

The Central Committee meeting was seen as the Communists’ last chance to reform their party before local elections scheduled this spring, in which Communist candidates are expected to fare poorly.

After a sharp debate that wound up the Central Committee meeting, Pavel Zinoviev, party chief on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Soviet Far East, said the committee recognized a small loyali1936990310 Vice President Anatoly I. Lukyanov told a news conference the Central Committee appealed to a larger group of Lithuanian Communists who declared themselves independent of Kremlin control to return to the fold before the Congress, implying they would not be allowed to send delegates to the nationwide meeting as long as they assert their independence.