PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOVIET UNION : Communism’s Crucible: Whose Party Will It Be? : Conservatives, progressives fight for the reins of what remains the most powerful organization in the country.

One of the most stunning dramas of global proportions is being played out in Moscow this week. The outcome of the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union will be the closest thing to the moment of truth since Gorbachev took power in 1985.

Just one month ago, liberal reformers were riding pretty high: Radical economist Gavriil Popov had become mayor of Moscow, liberal lawyer Anatoly Sobchak had become mayor of Leningrad, and then iconoclast Boris Yeltsin secured the presidency of the Russian Republic.

Yeltsin’s election may have been the last straw for conservative forces in the Soviet Union. Consistent as an outspoken opponent of their privileges, their beliefs and their lock on power, Yeltsin riled conservative Yegor Ligachev into action. Instead of sending more internal memos warning the party about disaster, Ligachev has now mobilized himself and his brethren to openly attack Gorbachev and the proponents of perestroika for abandoning the ideological heritage of Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore, he accuses them of slipping toward a “capitalist-type” market economy, of giving up the the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and ensuring the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself.

Significantly, in the context of the opening of the congress, conservatives also charge that the party has been humiliated by the elimination of the Constitution’s Article 6, which guaranteed the Communist Party the leading role as the country’s sole political force.

Since this rhetoric was stepped up, Ligachev’s man, Ivan Polozkov, has been elected to lead the newly formed Russian Communist Party, and the conservatives are feeling the deep flush of a victory long overdue. With one major success behind them, Ligachev, Polozkov and their ardent supporter, neo-Stalinist Nina Andreyeva, have launched a full campaign. In fact, with triumphant fervor Andreyeva has declared, “Socialism or death!” Clearly she sees this congress as their last line of retreat, their Stalingrad.

No wonder progressives wanted to postpone the congress and slow the momentum of this force. If the bandwagon continues to roll and the conservatives are victorious when the congress adjourns, it could mean the effective end of perestroika, and possibly glasnost, too.

Some people are wishfully saying that the conservatives’ victories are not that significant because they openly demonstrate that the Communist Party has become increasingly out of touch with popular sentiments, and that the growing voice of the conservatives will only prompt a party split. But that is precisely why the situation is so precarious. He who ends up with control at the All-Union Communist Party Congress next week has at his disposal the vast empire of organizational power.

The party today remains the most powerful organized entity in the Soviet Union. Despite the repeal of Article 6, the party still has enormous real-estate holdings and financial resources. It also continues to maintain an extensive party personnel network that permeates every fiber of society’s fabric. Special party watchdogs challenge the role of directors of every industrial enterprise, educational, medical and scientific establishment, military unit and government office. All report back to the party’s central apparatus where final authority still resides.

One would have expected that repeal of Article 6 and the opportunity for a multi-party system would have pluralistically dismantled the one-party apparatus by now. But nothing of the sort has happened, nor will it happen for at least four years. When Article 6 was eliminated from the constitution in March, it was already too late to open up the elections for which candidates already had been selected. As a result, the legislators who were nominated and elected got there by virtue of the old one-party system. Because of that, the Communist Party will be in a status-quo position in the Supreme Soviet until the next elections in 1994, when they can be fairly and effectively challenged.

The repeal has had one effect, however. Faced with the opportunity to join newly legal parties, many young, progressive Communists have been hoping to reform their party itself, rather than quit, as some progressives already have done. However, now that the conservatives have flexed their muscles, disillusionment among the party’s young progressives has taken on crisis proportions. The only likely outcome now is that either the progressives’ attrition will continue, which would be fine for the conservatives who want the party purified, or there will be a split. Alexander Tsipko, in a Moscow News article titled “Someone Must Quit,” said: “The (Communist Party) platform is unacceptable for both fundamentalists and democrats because it seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable. . . . We must realize that it is going against the grain to try and keep the party in the realm of half-truths and half-confessions. The party will not be able to exist in a world of truth if it remains part of former lies.”

But some reform-minded people, like Mikhail Gorbachev, believe that a split in the party will spell disaster for perestroika. He knows that the battle about to unfold is not for the hearts and minds of the Communist Party rank-and-file; rather, it is a last-ditch effort to hold the instruments of power.

With the still overwhelming network at its disposal, the Communist Party--if only from an organizational standpoint--is something worth fighting for. And Gorbachev, himself a pupil of the system, knows that if he walks away, he would be handing the party empire and its powerful resources to those left behind. On the other hand, if he stays as general secretary, chances are that he will become isolated as more and more reform-minded members leave in disgust.

One of the most unfortunate outcomes of the party congress would be if victorious conservatives, like Polozkov, in the end force Gorbachev to stay as their general secretary--especially if that were combined with the ouster of the other liberal Politburo members, such as Alexander Yakovlev and Eduard Shevardnadze. In such a case, Gorbachev could find himself a hostage of hostile forces, at the same time he, as president, is trying to move the country forward. Such a development, which is a growing possibility, would most certainly devastate his already beleaguered efforts to maintain stability in the Soviet Union and avoid an economic collapse.