2-Year Deadline Set by Gorbachev : Soviet reforms: He says his leadership should step down if the drive has not succeeded by then. Conservatives continue to ridicule his efforts.

As conservatives ridiculed President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts at Western-style economic reform Wednesday, the Kremlin chief conceded that his leadership should resign in two years if it hasn’t succeeded in bringing about change by then.

“I think that in two years, if there are no changes, this leadership has to go of its own accord--the same way it is showing courage now,” he told reporters between sessions of the 28th Communist Party Congress, where his policies have been the target of repeated attacks.

Gorbachev’s suggestion that the leadership should step down in two years if the nation continues to suffer through the transition was the first time he has imposed a deadline on the drive for reform.

Reformers were on trial Wednesday as rival factions within the party sharpened swords for a closed-door confrontation over the party’s survival and the nation’s future.

But the Kremlin leader appeared confident that he can execute a turnaround of the declining living conditions afflicting his nation.

In the brief exchange with journalists outside the Palace of Congresses, which was shown on Soviet nightly television news, Gorbachev denied that he seeks to protect his political power through reform.

“I said this to our delegates and I want to say it to you, when people want to cast a shadow on us and call into question our plans and intentions,” Gorbachev said. “Some people say ‘They grabbed power and are holding onto it.’ No, we’re not.

“I will tell you, before perestroika we had more power. I don’t know who in the world had more power than the general secretary of the Communist Party.”

Gorbachev said that if he sought only power, he would never have embarked on such an ambitious program to change Soviet society.

During the first day of debate on Gorbachev’s proposed party platform, Marxist hard-liners from the country’s troubled provinces lashed out at “ill-considered” tampering under the banner of perestroika, blaming the reforms for dismantling the framework of Soviet society and crushing public confidence in the party’s ability to rebuild it.

Buoyed by conservative Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev’s critical speech a day earlier lambasting “reckless radicalism,” farmers, laborers and party bureaucrats from regions mired in economic woes turned their fire on leaders of the party that has ruled unchallenged for 73 years.

“Political courage makes it necessary to admit that during perestroika, more has been broken than built,” said Ayaz Mutalibov, the Communist Party leader in the southern Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, “and there is no one to blame apart from the party and its leaders.”

Those who sought to defend perestroika and the efforts to transform the stagnant state-run economy to a market-oriented system were heckled by the emboldened delegates fed up with change that has imposed steadily mounting hardships.

The conservatives went on the attack early Wednesday when state farm director Anatoly Volochkov criticized the central government’s highhandedness in dealing with the country’s farmers.

“Each peasant feeds 17 of those who walk around with slogans and blame the party for everything,” Volochkov said, setting off thunderous applause.

Lashing out at efforts to break up giant agro-industrial complexes and redirect resources to smaller, family-run farms--a key element of Gorbachev’s economic reforms--Volochkov charged that this has brought chaos to the countryside.

“They should bear in mind that a market is not a bazaar,” he said.

Turning on the intellectuals and technocrats who lead the reform drive, Volochkov accused Moscow radicals like Mayor Gavriil Popov of wanting to break up the Communist Party in order to seize its considerable wealth and power.

Even a government minister, defense industry chief Boris M. Belousov, charged the party leadership with being unfaithful to the basic tenets of communism.

“During perestroika, the Central Committee’s ideological department turned away from the political struggle and the defense of Marxism-Leninism,” Belousov said.

The nearly 4,700 delegates to the pivotal conference are passing judgment on Gorbachev’s five-year reform drive, which has shaken the foundations of socialism in its effort to stimulate the productive masses with personal freedoms and autonomy never imagined under authoritarian rule by the Communists.

But party activists and working-class delegates have balked at what they see as a threat to the status and influence of the party installed in power by Soviet founder V. I. Lenin.

They lashed out repeatedly at party failings since Gorbachev’s introduction of perestroika in April, 1985. Their complaints, catalogued in six hours of debate on party policy, ranged from inter-ethnic strife to labor unrest to the haunting legacy of the Chernobyl nuclear accident four years ago.

Delegates called on the party to determine who was responsible for the Chernobyl accident, which has been repeatedly raised at the congress as a shameful example of the government’s ineffectual response to a disaster affecting millions.

Gorbachev’s inability to contain nationalist and ethnic conflicts also came under attack as speakers recalled that hundreds of lives have been lost since perestroika cracked the facade of multinational harmony.

Mutalibov, the Azerbaijani party leader, accused the Kremlin hierarchy of duplicity in suggesting that both Azerbaijan and Armenia have right on their sides in the battle for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. He said that democracy, though a noble pursuit, has led to “a spilling of blood” in the Soviet Union’s most backward regions.

Other delegates revived the recurring theme of party privilege and the leadership’s distance from the suffering of ordinary Soviet people.

Albina Shutilova of the Kirov regional party said the Kremlin leaders have only “television contact” with the public. A Murmansk laborer told other delegates he was aghast to learn that each of the 12 Politburo members has a personal airplane at his disposal, while Soviet travelers routinely wait in airports for days for tickets on the hopelessly overtaxed Aeroflot network.

The laborer, Nikolai Sidorkunin, went on to suggest--one of the few to do so openly--that Gorbachev step down.

“Since the unification of posts has given no results, it should not be continued,” Sidorkunin said, referring to Gorbachev’s election to the state presidency in March while he remained the party’s general secretary.

While the Kremlin leader was often the indirect target of conservative criticism, most of the delegates who trooped to the podium to denounce his efforts at reform said there was no logical successor as party chief.

“Mikhail Gorbachev began perestroika, and he should continue it to see its results,” said Sokolov, the Byelorussia leader.

Gorbachev told foreign reporters at the congress that, despite the harsh words for economic and social consequences of his reforms, no one was questioning the political course of perestroika.

While the party leadership is “responsible for omissions, one should not forget that they displayed courage by starting this movement toward a new life,” Gorbachev said.

Perestroika’s tinkering with theories that have guided the government since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution appears to have confronted some Communists with an identity crisis.

The new head of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Stanislav Gurenko, struck out at those “who have assumed an openly hostile stand with regard to the Soviet Communist Party and the people’s socialist choice.”

Gurenko blamed the party leadership, especially Politburo members Vadim A. Medvedev and Alexander N. Yakovlev, for the erosion of ideology’s role in government and society.

Medvedev, a close Gorbachev adviser, was singled out repeatedly for criticism by delegates to the congress as a figure clinging to tired rhetoric when decisive actions and new plans are needed.

A rumble of aggression swept the cavernous Palace of Congresses when Moscow party leader Yuri A. Prokofiev, a reform advocate, called for a “turn away from the events of the recent founding congress of the Russian Republic Communist Party.” Conservative critics of perestroika had dominated that forum, denouncing the reforms as the undoing of what was already a troubled system.

Derisive rhythmic clapping twice drowned out Prokofiev’s defense of market economics, and Russian Republic party leader Ivan K. Polozkov, a rising star of the party right, had to intercede to persuade delegates to give all speakers a chance.

Delegates break into separate groups today to hash over proposals on how the party should be managed.

BEATING THE APPARATCHIKS--The left and the right fear a common foe--bureaucrats. A9

THE PARTY CONGRESS: DAY THREE

Highlights of Wednesday’s session of the 28th Communist Party Congress:

Gorbachev’s deadline: President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, speaking outside the session, gave himself and the Soviet leadership two years to improve citizens’ lives or resign. And at the congress, conservatives ridiculed the embattled president’s efforts at Western-style economic reform, chiding him that “a market is not a bazaar.”

Strange alliance: Western-style reformers and ultra-Marxists, both alarmed by the mounting and venomous attacks of mid-level Communists on Gorbachev’s leadership, moved to forge an odd-couple alliance at the party congress to prevent a takeover by bureaucrats--the apparatchiks who are fighting to retain their dachas, new cars and other perks of party office.

Sign of the times: One delegate, fed up with trying to get his name on the list of speakers, strode to the front of the hall and unfurled a sign reading, “I ask for the floor. I have something to say.” It was signed “Master Koltsov.” Despite his efforts, however, Koltsov was not given the floor and the sign was quickly removed.

Key quote: “I think that in two years, if there are no changes, this leadership should go. . . .”--Gorbachev, speaking to reporters outside the session.