Gorbachev Pleads Case to Workers : Reforms: He tells rank-and-file congress members that party will be dead without changes. ‘Am I needed by you?’ he asks.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, warning that his reforms are threatened by conservative opposition, on Sunday told the workers and farmers attending the 28th Communist Party Congress that they must back him or see perestroika fail.

“ Perestroika is now at such a crucial stage that some people are trying to stop it, binding its legs and all that, in order to maintain their own positions of power,” Gorbachev said.

“But for us to work differently and to obtain different results from our work, for us to restore the incentives in agriculture, in industry and in our whole state, we have to continue perestroika. “

Anticipating further conservative attacks on his political and economic reforms during the final debates this week on a new party platform, Gorbachev sought the support of the rank-and-file delegates at the congress during a four-hour meeting at the Kremlin.

“They criticize me personally or the Politburo and debate whether to remove us,” he said, according to delegates who were present. “I will listen to it all, but you will decide everything. Am I needed by you? You will decide.”

Soviet workers and farmers must realize, Gorbachev said later on Soviet television, that their interests lie in radical reforms that would bring them the power, politically and economically, to improve their own lives directly, reversing decades of centralized control.

And the party must realize, he added, that without such a change it will be dead and no longer be able to claim that it represents the Soviet working class.

As the congress moves into its last three days, Gorbachev, in bidding for the delegates’ support, sought to strengthen his centrist position after days of criticism from both radical reformers and conservatives.

The proposed platform is expected to be brought up for debate and a possible vote today, and that will be followed by discussion of Gorbachev’s plans for a reorganization of the party and then the election of a new leadership.

Gorbachev told the workers and farmers that, although together they constitute only 16% of the delegates to the congress, they will have a decisive role in the final voting as reformers and conservatives battle over the future of the party.

“I maintain only one thing--the policy that I have chosen, I will pursue,” delegates quoted him as saying, “and for me the greatest reward is that my motherland will live.”

But the rank-and-file delegates’ questions, focusing on food shortages, proposed price increases, the chronic housing crisis, rising crime and recent ethnic conflicts, were as sharp as any that the leadership has faced over the past week during the major policy debates.

“People feel that the processes of renewal are going slowly, both at the grass-roots level and in the center,” Gorbachev said after the session. “That is why they question the Central Committee, the Politburo and me as the general secretary so seriously.”

He acknowledged that the party is “in debt” to the country’s workers and farmers, having promised them much over the years but delivered a great deal less, and he again pleaded for further patience in the implementation of perestroika.

Gorbachev nevertheless appealed to the country’s coal miners not to proceed with a one-day, political “warning strike” planned for Wednesday, the day that the congress is due to conclude, in a signal to the party leadership that results are needed, not more words.

“We understand the difficulties and the problems of the miners,” Gorbachev said. “We understand that they want to make clear for us that perestroika does not go the way they would like. They want to signal us to move more quickly on reforms. We understand this signal.

“But to act with these methods--somebody is evidently provoking them--is impermissible. Everyone should understand that this is not the time for ultimatums. This is an extreme means of action, especially when we are at the brink of fundamental changes. It is too much of a luxury when we are so involved in such deep changes to get involved in a conflict situation.”

Although only scheduled for a day, the miners’ strike could grow, just as work stoppages did last year, Soviet leaders fear, and thus greatly damage the economy.

Concern is also real about the impact of such a political strike coming at the conclusion of the party congress, which was intended to give perestroika a new political and psychological impetus.

“I hope that those comrades, the miners, hear us,” Gorbachev said. “We value the position of the miners quite highly, but we want it to be responsible, especially now.”

The party congress, the most open and probably the most tumultuous in decades, is still far from a consensus on the principal issues before it, Soviet political commentators said on Sunday.

Although there is little doubt that Gorbachev will be reelected as the party leader, the mandate he will have for bolder reforms remains uncertain.

“Only a miracle can bring the congress to a consensus,” Eduard F. Gonzalez wrote Sunday in the government newspaper Izvestia. “I do not mean in resolutions, of course, because there will be enough neutral words to satisfy all sides. But how do you bring vital positions closer when people do not even want to listen to each other?

“Only a referendum held after the congress will really show where the country’s Communists would like to go--to the right or to the left.