Soviet Reforms Likely to Shrink Party Ranks

Significant numbers of members of the Soviet Communist Party are likely to quit in coming months in opposition to its new reform policies and other plans for its total reorganization, top party officials said Friday.

Vadim A. Medvedev, a member of the party’s ruling Politburo and its secretary for ideology, said that some conservatives within the 18.8-million-member party cannot accept its new, reformist platform, the planned decentralization of the party structure and--perhaps most difficult of all--its decision to yield its constitutional monopoly on political power.

These “conservative-minded people” would be free--and even encouraged--to leave without the penalties imposed in the past as the party prepares for a congress that will set not only its own course but also one for the whole country for the next three to five years, Medvedev said.

While the party would continue to hold to a “core” of traditional party principles, it also recognizes “the need for a renewal, ridding it of mistakes and deformations of the past and upholding democratic and humane socialism,” Medvedev said.

“There are some comrades who do not accept the renovation of society, just as there are comrades who see a need for the renewal of the very fundamentals of our philosophy. . . . There is nothing unusual in some people perhaps leaving the party . . . as it is reconstructed around its platform advocating perestroika.

“Ridding it of people who disagree will preserve the vanguard role of the party for perestroika ,” Medvedev added. “This won’t be a division of the party, but a natural cleansing.”

Critics on the radical left, who are complaining that the party is moving too cautiously in reforming itself, might also leave, he added, but they would probably form a rival party.

The Communist Party, he said, is now prepared to allow groups within its ranks to hold different views on various issues and to debate with one another and the party leadership, as long as the groups do not develop into organized “factions” challenging official party positions or dividing the party.

Medvedev, speaking at the end of a meeting this week of the party’s policy-making Central Committee, announced that the party would open its next congress a year ahead of schedule on July 2 to adopt a program, reorganize its ranks and choose a new leadership.

The 4,700 delegates for the congress will be chosen largely by secret ballot in competitive elections in grass-roots party organizations, Georgy P. Razumovsky, another party secretary, said.

Although some delegates--most likely those from large, sparsely populated areas--would be chosen on the basis of lists of candidates recommended by party officials, these, too, must be competitive, with more nominees than open positions and election by secret ballot.

The intended effect, Razumovsky said, will be to put the congress in the hands of rank-and-file delegates rather than the party bureaucracy itself, probably for the first time in more than 70 years.

The Central Committee also debated a new set of party rules, which will force the party’s reorganization from top to bottom, if they are adopted by the congress.

Called in conjunction with the meeting this week of the Congress of People’s Deputies that created the country’s new executive presidency and elected Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the party’s general secretary, to the post, the Central Committee session quickly developed into a prolonged and often fractious debate on the party’s future, according to official accounts of the debate published Friday.

No longer enjoying a constitutional monopoly on power, the party is only slowly adjusting to the need to win popular support and to justify all its actions, according to those accounts. In fact, there were indications that many Central Committee members thought that some sort of primacy should have been preserved and the party’s authority maintained.

Yuri I. Litvintsev, the party first secretary in the Tula region, argued that the party remains, in reality, a ruling party and thus is entitled to a special constitutional and legal position. The failure to state this, he asserted, would only accelerate the anti-socialist tendencies in Soviet society.

Apas D. Dzhumagulov, prime minister of the Central Asian republic of Kirghizia, angrily told the meeting that party unity is under active attack, that party rules are no longer obeyed and that consequently the party’s critics are “calling for the party to leave the political arena and cast away our fundamental science, Marxism-Leninism.”

And the party leadership, including Gorbachev, came under attack by conservative members of the Central Committee who criticized this loss of authority.

The party had become little more than “a discussion club” as it seeks to govern through the new Parliament, said Vladimir I. Brovikov, the Soviet ambassador to Poland and an arch-conservative within the party hierarchy. This is “a catastrophe for the country.”

Yet, Brovikov added, “there are members of our leadership who are carving the cross for the grave of the party as the leading force in society.”

Party leaders, including Alexander N. Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev’s closest advisers, and Veniamin F. Yakovlev, the justice minister, attempted to reassure committee members, arguing that the party has more than sufficient support and grass-roots strength to retain its leading position in competitive elections.

But Yuri A. Prokofiev, the party first secretary in Moscow, complained that a proposed law regulating the activities of political parties would deprive the Communist Party of its effective control of most large workplaces.

“There is a real basis for eliminating the party organizations in enterprises and institutions,” Prokofiev said, warning that the Soviet party is in danger of repeating the mistakes of East European parties that last year lost their ruling positions. “This (development) could bring the organizational destruction of the party.”