Yeltsin Warns Party It Faces ‘Historic Defeat’

Populist leader Boris N. Yeltsin told the Soviet Communist Party Congress on Friday that, after seven decades in power, the party is facing “a historic defeat” at the hands of the people unless it democratizes much more and much faster than its conservatives have allowed.

Yeltsin, the president of the Russian republic, warned in the strongest terms the congress has heard since convening at the start of the week that time has run out for traditional communism in the land of its birth.

The Soviet people’s disillusionment with the party is rapidly turning to anger, Yeltsin continued, and they are prepared to vote it out of office or perhaps even rise in rebellion, as happened in Eastern Europe last year.

Then, party leaders might find themselves on trial “for the damages they brought to the people and the nation,” Yeltsin said.

“Events are developing very rapidly,” he said. “Any attempt to delay them, as some people are dreaming about, will inevitably lead to a full, historic defeat for the party. . . .

“Those who think about other options should look at the fate of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe. They were separated from the people . . . and found themselves sidetracked.”

Yeltsin called for the Soviet Communist Party’s reorientation along broader, socialist lines so that it becomes a “union of democratic forces,” rather than the political and ideological vanguard of the working class that it now proclaims itself. He proposed that it be renamed the “Party of Democratic Socialism.”

He urged the deliberate development of competing factions within the party after a long prohibition, the election of a new leadership on the basis of this competition, the drafting of a new party platform and the convening of another congress in six months to a year to adopt this program. He also called for the withdrawal of party cells from the armed forces, the police and other state organizations.

Directly disputing President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s declaration earlier this week that the fate of his restructuring program, perestroika , is at stake in the party congress, Yeltsin said, “That question is being decided by people outside the walls of this building. It is being decided in the Supreme Soviet (the country’s legislature).

“What this congress is deciding,” Yeltsin continued, “is the fate of the Soviet Communist Party itself.”

With this approach, sharply different from that outlined earlier to the congress by Gorbachev, Yeltsin appeared to be positioning himself more clearly than ever as an alternative to Gorbachev as national and party leader without directly challenging him.

The nearly 4,700 delegates listened to him intently, but he drew only limited applause, much of that coming from the more liberal Moscow and Leningrad party delegations.

Gorbachev, now a frequent target for Yeltsin’s criticism, told reporters later in the day: “I had expected more.”

Boris Kustov, the general manager of a Siberian steel mill, called on Gorbachev and Yeltsin to work together to pull the country out of its multiple political and economic crises.

Describing them as the nation’s “manifest leaders,” Kustov said that only “their joint efforts would stabilize the political situation in the country, strengthen confidence in the Soviet Communist Party and rally the various trends in the party to accomplish key tasks.”

Yeltsin’s declaration came as delegates intensified their debate on a complex of documents before them--Gorbachev’s report, statements by other members of the party’s Politburo, plans for the party’s reorganization and draft platforms--in anticipation of making far-reaching decisions early next week.

If the party does not democratize broadly and quickly, Yeltsin warned, it would probably split into radical and conservative wings “and, sooner or later, it will be dropped from the ranks of real political forces of the country.”

So far, only the radical Democratic Platform, with about 100 congress votes, has threatened to break from the party if its demands for reforms are not met, but it appears to be retreating on that, pledging to remain through the congress in order to support Gorbachev and then deciding on the basis of developments.

Vladimir Lysenko, one of its organizers, said Friday that he thought a split is inevitable, but that it would come after the congress.

Yeltsin, once again going against the political grain, said he felt the party leadership is placing too much emphasis on party unity, and this gives conservatives the power to slow or even stop reforms.

“The actions of conservative forces in the party have not been neutralized in recent years--quite the contrary,” he said. “Too much was said to the effect that we are all in the same boat, on the same side of the barricades, in a single line and share the same thinking.”

Such a stand “guaranteed the security” of conservative forces in the party and strengthens their confidence that “they can get revenge” on the reformers and even reverse perestroika, he said.

The conservative criticism continued throughout the debate Friday, making it clear that while Gorbachev may command personal support of the majority of delegates, his policies still face strong opposition among them.

Gennady I. Yanayev, the country’s top labor leader, attributed much of the current crisis to the “romantic” idea, encouraged by Gorbachev and other reformers at the start of perestroika, that the nation’s problems could be resolved in two or three years.

“A dramatic collapse of this illusion is under way now,” Yanayev said, explaining the deep popular anger that the party faces.

Ivan K. Polozkov, the new first secretary of the Russian Communist Party, said that the party leadership over the past five years under Gorbachev has “constantly lacked creative purposefulness and practical work, proper accountability and personal responsibility.”

Three rival platforms were presented Friday as alternatives, either in whole or in part, to the program put forward by the present party Central Committee.

Vyacheslav M. Shostakovsky, rector of the Moscow Higher Party School and a founder of the Democratic Platform, urged the delegates to “abandon all attempts to drive economic activity into an ideological corridor.”

“No sacred cow will give us milk or meat,” he said.

The problems with socialism, he said, are not just in the way it was developed in the Soviet Union, which still proudly calls itself “the first country of socialism,” but in its basic concepts.

Although people had marched willingly under Communist slogans in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and later, Shostakovsky said the party had yet to deliver “the land to the peasants, bread to the hungry, the factories to the workers and all power to the soviets,” the country’s governing councils, as it had promised.

Alexei A. Sergeyev, a prominent political economist, criticized both the Central Committee’s program and the Democratic Platform’s proposal alike--the first as a creeping re-establishment of capitalism, the second as a full-fledged return.

“Both of these plans will lead to a dead end,” Sergeyev said in a rousing speech, urging a return to traditional but reinvigorated Marxism. “Both of these programs will profit only small groups of gifted con artists.”

He proposed retaining state ownership and central planning for basic industries, only short-term planning for consumer industries and freeing of the service sector. He also called for controls on private businesses run as cooperatives, fiscal reform and strong governing councils, the soviets established after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Private businessmen are unlikely to pull the country out of its profound economic crisis, Sergeyev said, but a united, well-led party supported by the nation’s workers and farmers could.

RUSSIANS LEAD THE PARTY

The Communist Congress delegate breakdown from the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics, with the representation based on the number of communists in each republic: Lithuania: 10 Latvia: 41 Estonia: 28 Byelorussia: 171 Ukraine: 804 Moldavia: 49 Georgia: 98 Azerbaijan: 97 Kazakhstan: 207 Kirghizia: 37 Armenia: 48 Tadzhikistan: 31 Turkmenia: 28 Uzbekistan: 162 Russia: 2,574 Middle-Age Delegates Dominate

Of the delegates to the current congress, 7.3% are women; 60% are elected people’s deputies at various levels of the government; 84% had not been elected to a major party conference before this year. Delegate breakdown by age: 18-30: 1.5% 31-40: 25% 41-50: 44% 51-60: 27 over 61: 3%