REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Kremlin Chief Unflappable Under Fire

The only hint of pressure on Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday was the soft, southern Russian accent that kept slipping into his rich baritone.

During a three-hour speech that made no apologies to increasingly critical party conservatives, Gorbachev entered the reputed lion’s den of the 28th Communist Party Congress exuding confidence and well-choreographed congeniality.

Gorbachev and his perestroika reform program are under fire at the congress that some worry could be his last stand. A Siberian delegate from the gulag city of Magadan leaped up at the very start to demand that Gorbachev and his Politburo resign.

Unflinchingly all-business, Gorbachev nodded thoughtfully, pushed back his steel-rimmed spectacles and called on the next man wanting to speak.

Despite fears that he would be intimidated by a recent upsurge in anti- perestroika conservatism that was evident at last month’s congress to re-establish a separate Communist Party for the Russian Republic, Gorbachev gave no ground to the right.

He chatted and chortled throughout the day with embattled Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, who some thought he might use as a fall guy. Gorbachev’s sharpest words were aimed at the prime minister’s ill-considered price reform plan, but he made a show of solidarity with his government chief by taking him along for a seemingly impromptu walkabout on Red Square to collect accolades and accusations from the Soviet public.

Between shouts of “Good luck” and “We are with you,” the Soviet leader heard laments about inadequate food and wretched living conditions.

“My son is sick, and I can get no help,” one tearful woman shouted to Gorbachev as he approached the cordoned-off crowd to press the flesh. Immediately concerned and paternal, he asked her to write to him and dispatched two aides to explain how to get in touch.

Asked by Western journalists if he would lose heart and leave the leadership, he replied it was the people’s call if they wanted to replace him.

“I would not raise my own ambitions here,” he stated nonchalantly.

He put off another journalist’s question with a smile and a daring joke about the need to wait in line, a sore subject in a crowd of frustrated Soviet consumers.

The nation’s economic woes are at the root of Gorbachev’s political troubles, and reminders of persistent shortages have poked through the veneer of progress at the party conference.

Vinyl briefcases were doled out to delegates to provide them with party documents as well as souvenir notebooks and shiny pen-and-pencil sets--minus the ink and lead cartridges to make the instruments functional.

Spare parts are hard to come by--even for the elite.

For those on the other side of the Kremlin’s crenelated red walls, life is even tougher with so many movers and shakers in town. Public transport is commandeered to shuttle the nearly 4,700 delegates between the congress hall and the Moscow hotels they have filled to overflowing. Traffic is halted for the seemingly endless motorcades, and pedestrians are shooed from their usual routes to ease crowding around the Kremlin.

The few desirable foods and consumer goods will become even scarcer by the end of the congress, as delegates from distant regions cart off the capital’s comparative wealth.

There was never much need for precise counting of votes at past congresses, when virtually every measure was approved unanimously with a simultaneous wave of red party cards. But democracy creates new demands, and the cavernous meeting hall of the Palace of Congresses has been outfitted with new electronic voting machines and a flashy multicolored tote board.

Delegates clucked with impressed interest and toyed with the new gadgets built into the back of each red-upholstered seat. Apparently unavailable from the assembly lines of this nation just getting acquainted with pluralism, the new system was provided by the Philips electronics firm based in the Netherlands.