Public Slows Reforms--Gorbachev : People’s Conservative Fears Blamed for Economic Delays

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today that a conservative Soviet public afraid of change is holding back his efforts at economic and political reform.

“Changing people’s minds is the most difficult thing. Perestroika depends on public opinion, and it’s conservative,” he said.

Gorbachev has previously blamed bureaucrats for bogging down perestroika, his program of restructuring Soviet society. This is the first time he has said the people might be at fault.

“In politics, the public doesn’t accept pluralism, and it has complexes about ideological conceptions and cliches,” Gorbachev told a crowd of reporters in a break at the Russian congress.

Many hard-liners are unhappy with Gorbachev’s recent moves to end the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, legalize private ownership of factories and otherwise upset basic laws of Marxism.

“In economics, they say you must not touch this and you must not touch that,” Gorbachev said.

Turning to Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, who gave a television interview last week on economic reform proposals, Gorbachev commented: “Ryzhkov only said a few words, and already there is great agitation in the country.”

“Take any sphere, everywhere we are hindered by complexes,” the Soviet leader said.

Faced with public alarm, Gorbachev has repeatedly delayed a radical economic reform plan over the last two months.

He backed off suggestions by his aides that he is planning Polish-style “shock therapy,” which brought sudden price rises and mass unemployment in that country, in hope of shortening the difficult period of transition from communism to a market economy.

Instead, Gorbachev has promised the public that nothing will be decided without discussion. He also indicated that his presentation of the program to the national Parliament will be delayed again, as he will not discuss it with his own presidential council of advisers until May 22.

Gorbachev also used the brief encounter with reporters to reassure the Soviet populace that the country can handle the current intense political struggle and its economic crisis, which has left stores near empty.

“People are saying ‘Chaos, chaos, collapse, collapse.’ When Lenin watched a similar revolutionary process, he said: ‘You know, this chaos will crystallize a new form of life.’ ”

He also condemned the Soviet tradition of government-owned monopolies, which have been blamed for part of the nation’s economic stagnation.

He even joked about it.

“We fought against the capitalist monopoly for 70 years--but the strongest monopoly is our own,” he said.