Gorbachev Reelected; Vows to Press Reforms : Party congress: He gets 75% of the vote as general secretary. But conservatives make a strong showing.

Despite sharp conservative criticism of his leadership, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev won reelection Tuesday as the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party after telling delegates to a party congress that he will not slow or curtail his reforms and that they have too much momentum to be reversed.

Gorbachev, 59, who has held the party’s top post for the past five years, received 3,411 votes out of the 4,527 cast, and he welcomed the election as “support for my position.” His only rival, Teimuraz Avaliani, a leader of a coal miners’ strike last summer, received 501 votes.

But a quarter of those who voted, 1,116 delegates, cast their ballots against Gorbachev in a show of hard-line, conservative strength that runs deep within the party and that remains as ready to oppose Gorbachev’s policies as it was to challenge him directly at the congress.

In a fighting speech earlier Tuesday, one of his angriest, Gorbachev railed against the conservatives, accusing them of even considering a coup d’etat to halt perestroika , as his reform program is known.

“There is no way to bring yesterday back,” he told the delegates. “No dictatorship, if someone has this crazy idea in his head, can resolve anything.”

Referring for the first time publicly to warnings from radical reformers and many of his own supporters that conservatives, supported by the military, might attempt to seize power, Gorbachev repeatedly challenged the almost 4,700 delegates on the most controversial issues, including the development of a market economy, the diminished role of the party in government, the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the divisions in the Soviet leadership.

When mutterings of dissent and open heckling grew louder as he called for greater agricultural and economic reform, Gorbachev even threatened to stop his speech.

“Comrades, is that enough?” he asked, breaking off. “Or do you want me to finish? I am alone, and you are thousands.”

Defending his reforms after a weeklong conservative onslaught, Gorbachev declared, “If perestroika is to blame for anything at all, then it is only for not being implemented resolutely and consistently enough.”

Still, the conservative protest vote against Gorbachev reflected the sharp divisions within the party over perestroika --and served as a warning to him that he will face strong opposition at every turn.

Under Soviet election procedures, electors may vote against a candidate without voting for his opponent, and the winner must receive at least half the ballots cast. Gorbachev received 75% of the votes.

The election, conducted by a secret ballot, was the first at a party congress for the post of general secretary; in the past, the party’s policy-making Central Committee, whose members were largely appointees, elected the leader on the recommendation of the previous leadership.

“If some delegates arrived here--and that was obvious at different meetings and during some speeches--with the hope of returning the party back to the old conditions of giving commands and orders, they are deeply mistaken,” Gorbachev said.

“The political line on perestroika, with small exceptions, is being supported by this congress.”

Yet, Gorbachev acknowledged, with clear anger, bitterness and a sense of betrayal, that he faces strong opposition high in the government and party leadership.

“It cannot be that the president and the government have one opinion and some officials have another,” he told the delegates in a striking appeal for a disciplined adherence to party policy. “If they have any decency, they should ask to resign and step down.”

Although Gorbachev did not identify these officials, the criticism of his policies has been led by Yegor K. Ligachev, the conservative standard-bearer within the Politburo. Regional party leaders and senior military commanders have also been harsh in their criticism.

Answering delegates’ questions before the vote, Gorbachev reiterated his call for sweeping changes in the party hierarchy when a new Central Committee is chosen today or Thursday.

“My position is clear, and I will defend it and hold to that line,” he said. “For this, we will need very serious changes in the composition of the Central Committee, in the leadership, and not only here but out there as well.”

He acknowledged the deep crisis of confidence within the party but said that this resulted largely from its failure to learn how to operate in freedom and without the coercion it formerly used.

“The biggest achievement of the entire period of reforms is the freedom that we now have,” he told the delegates. “Society has won freedom for itself. This freedom has involved millions of people in politics, and without it we would not have had this congress.

“ Perestroika has fulfilled the foremost task of any revolution, comrades, by giving freedom to the people. Our problem here is that we have yet to learn how to use this new freedom of ours.”

As he summed up the past week’s debate on party policies, he rejected charges by hard-liners, including military commanders, that he had allowed the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, thereby endangering the Soviet Union as well as the cause of communism.

“People are asking if our policy not to interfere in the processes in Eastern Europe was correct,” he said, his voice betraying his anger. “Well, do you want tanks again? Shall we teach them again how to live?”

There was an uneasy silence, one both of embarrassment and of opposition, when he challenged his critics to dispute the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and another confrontation when delegates applauded criticism that he had quoted of his foreign travels.

“Do you think that is right, then?” he demanded, looking angrily at the delegates. “If we are at such a level of thinking, it is a disaster.”

WHAT THEY SAID

Some quotes from Tuesday’s session of the Communist Party congress: “I maintain only one thing: The policy that I have chosen I will pursue, and for me the biggest prize is that my homeland will live.” --President Mikhail S. Gorbachev

“It is an illusion to think that , after all dissenters, all who do not wish to be drive belts and cogs of the apparatus, quit the party, it will retain all the property of the Soviet Communist Party and the associated authority. It will not be so. . . . The party will be bankrupt, obliged to repay its debts to the people, if only with its property.” --Boris N. Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic

“I don’t see another force other than the party which could bring progress to our country.” --Hard-liner Yegor K. Ligachev

“Our Russian thirst for blood is showing. It’s stupid and ugly and inhuman.” --Inna Dementyeva, a Moscow delegate