Lawmakers Argue Pace of Soviet Change : Economy: Increase in price of bread postponed as nation tries to eliminate central planning.

The Soviet government today postponed unpopular bread price increases, but lawmakers were considering a plan to speed up other elements of a radical economic reform plan.

Bread prices will be raised, but “of course, not by July 1” as originally planned, a top official said. When plans to raise the price of bread and other food and goods were announced last month, they set off a wave of panic buying.

The official--Yuri Maslyukov, chairman of the government agency that plans the centralized economy--spoke with reporters during a break at a session of the Supreme Soviet legislature.

Lawmakers were debating a resolution on the economic program presented last month by Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. The resolution calls for faster and more radical steps to make the switch from central planning to a market economy.

“We can’t stretch the elastic . . .; we have to begin work now,” Alexei Boiko, chairman of an economic reform commission, told parliamentary deputies, urging the speeding up of the program.

The draft resolution would instruct the government to cut spending immediately on the military and the state bureaucracy.

It would also give the government until September to make concrete proposals for faster economic reforms, including drafting laws on creation of a stock market, commercial banks and credit and a federal reserve bank.

But opposition surfaced during debate, and the resolution was likely to change drastically by day’s end.

Ryzhkov, the economic plan’s architect, told reporters he supported the resolution. “The project was worked on by commissions and is fairly objective and allows us to work further,” he said. But he said it would be difficult to complete all the laws and practical measures by the autumn deadline.

Today’s proposal did not address the Ryzhkov plan’s price increases for most consumer products, which are due to take effect in January.

The Ryzhkov plan was criticized for raising prices without freeing enough goods and prices from the government’s control to allow a true transition to a full market economy.

Particularly unpopular was the proposal to at least double the price of bread, the staple of the Soviet diet. Currently, bread is extremely cheap at about 30 cents a loaf.