Gorbachev Will Push Reform as Congress Opens

With the Soviet Union trapped in an increasingly grave domestic crisis, the ruling Communist Party begins a crucial congress here today with the nation’s fate and its own future the main items on the agenda.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who will open the congress with a lengthy report as the party’s general secretary, is expected to bid for a mandate to initiate even bolder reforms that will establish a multi-party political system and accelerate development of a market economy here.

Only such radical departures from Soviet communism, Gorbachev has argued with ever greater conviction, will save the nation, whose economy cannot feed, clothe or house its people and whose government cannot cope with the resulting crisis.

Social discontent, now evident in workers’ strikes, crime waves and inter-ethnic violence, compounds these political and economic crises. New problems such as unemployment, homelessness and drug abuse make clear how quickly the country’s social fabric is shredding.

Gorbachev, speaking late last month on the Soviet Union’s struggle to surmount these multiple crises, contended that conservative resistance had badly undercut perestroika , his program of political and economic reform, in its initial stage and that a new impetus is needed.

In an address expected to last about three hours, Gorbachev will be outlining his policy proposals and seeking to recover the psychological power that perestroika initially possessed. Later, he will seek to form a new team at party headquarters to carry out the policies endorsed by the congress, the party’s highest body.

But, even as the congress was preparing to open, Gorbachev’s own leadership of the party was uncertain--and was being openly debated in the Soviet news media in a discussion that both demonstrated the new political openness here and underscored the search for new solutions to the country’s problems.

Calls for the separation of the posts of state president and party leader continued Sunday as the 4,683 delegates to the congress registered, and it was reported that conservatives may well nominate one of their own for the party post in a direct challenge to Gorbachev, who wants to retain both positions.

“A lot in our life will depend on the documents to be adopted by the congress, in which direction the renewal of the party will develop . . . and whether there will be any renewal,” Alexander Krutov, a top political commentator, said Sunday in a report from the Kremlin for the evening news program “Vremya.”

“And who will head the Communist Party?” Krutov continued, raising a question on prime-time television that could not even be asked, except rhetorically, at the last party congress four years ago and virtually all those that preceded for seven decades. “What will be the views and the position of the leader?”

Interviews with nearly a dozen delegates on that question drew some unexpected answers--and made clear that the course and outcome of the congress, like most recent political conferences here, are unpredictable.

“Why do we need Gorbachev?” one delegate, not otherwise identified, asked Krutov. “We need consolidation. We must not fight today for the positions at the top, but think about work. We have to unite, especially in such a difficult period. Later, we will divide the functions, and everyone can take what he wants.”

Another said, “New leaders should appear on the horizon (at the congress), and we will see them. I think we need new leaders today.”

Gorbachev had his defenders as well among those interviewed by Krutov for the broadcast, but even they predicted a struggle over his policies as well as over the leadership of the party.

“This is the most difficult problem today,” a Gorbachev supporter said. “The problem of leadership is acute in the Soviet Communist Party and in the Communist Party of Russia. But I see no leader who could possibly replace Gorbachev.”

Another Gorbachev supporter backed his policies and general leadership but argued that one of his closest political allies, perhaps Alexander N. Yakovlev, an architect of perestroika, should take over management of the party.

“Gorbachev is the most authoritative person in the country and in the party,” he said. “But I think there should not be any intertwining of the functions of the president and the general secretary. There should be the chairman of our party . . . and many support Comrade Yakovlev for this role.”

There were other impromptu nominees, including Vadim V. Bakatin, the popular interior minister, and Oleg I. Lobov, who had run for first secretary of the Russian Communist Party last month.

“We should not rush the election of the leader as we did, unfortunately, at the Russian party congress,” one of the deputies said.

The election of a new leadership will come toward the end of the congress following the main debate, which will focus on Gorbachev’s report, and subsequent discussions of a new party platform and plans for the party’s reorganization.

The congress is now expected to run at least 10 days, not the seven originally scheduled. In addition to the 4,683 delegates elected to the congress from party organizations around the country, 350 workers and farmers were invited as participants to help balance the numerous apparatchiki.

The debates seem certain to be stormy. Not only is the country’s future at stake, but blocs of traditional Marxists and radical reformers are challenging the party leadership with their own platforms--and agreed over the weekend to cooperate to ensure that each gets a full hearing.

“The possibilities for compromise, which during the whole time of perestroika have been Gorbachev’s essential tactical weapon, are in fact exhausted,” Vladimir Lysenko, a leader of the radicals’ Democratic Platform, said over the weekend. “The center’s base is rapidly eroding, and in these circumstances Gorbachev has to make his final choice.”

The real power plays, however, will likely involve challenges from conservative members of the party and government apparat, which opposed Gorbachev’s reforms from the outset five years ago and can now point to deepening crises and assert, “We told you so.”

These conservatives demonstrated their strength at the Russian party conference last month, electing a sharp critic of perestroika as their party’s first secretary, and they will probably form a majority at the Soviet party congress. They similarly could try to seize control of the party’s policy-making Central Committee and perhaps the ruling Politburo.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the populist president of Russia, the Soviet Union’s largest constituent republic, urged reformist delegates at a weekend meeting to press for a full declaration of support for perestroika and expressed his own concern that conservatives might dominate the congress.