Yeltsin Offers Crash Plan to Revive Soviet Economy

Boris N. Yeltsin, president of the Soviet Union’s vast Russian Federation, on Monday unveiled a crash 500-day program aimed at reviving the country’s collapsing economy by selling off most state property, freeing prices to respond to supply and demand and sharply cutting spending on defense.

Yeltsin told the republic’s legislature, newly convened for its autumn session, that its work on economic reform would mark the beginning of “a new political course--this is the course to Russia’s revival.”

Yeltsin, whose Russian republic spans two-thirds of the Soviet Union’s territory, presented the 500-day plan as the country’s best hope of salvaging its crumbling economy, and he has warned that he will not wait for the central government if it tries to delay reform.

“Russia gives the impulse for change to the entire country,” Yeltsin told lawmakers. “The center can no longer ignore this and discard everything done by us.”

If adopted, the plan will be put to the legislatures of the other 14 Soviet republics withthe goal of beginning its implementation on Oct. 1, the start of the Soviet fiscal year.

Newly disclosed elements of the program’s first 100 days, if adopted nationwide, would include:

--An immediate 10% cut in the defense budget and 20% cut in funds for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence and security agency.

--A 75% cut in foreign aid.

--The quick selloff of government cars and various other property.

--The sale on the world financial market, probably for a fraction of their nominal value, of the debts that other countries owe to the Soviet Union.

In opening this push to get the program approved by the Russian legislature, Yeltsin jumped ahead in his competition with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for leadership of the nation as it reshapes its economic system.

The 500-day plan distributed to Russian deputies on Monday would allow private ownership of land and businesses, which now are virtually all state-owned, and begin the selloff of apartments, plots of land and enterprises by the end of the year.

In a key move, it would gradually remove state control of prices to allow the market forces of supply and demand to work and entrepreneurship to replace government management of most of the economy.

The Yeltsin program incorporates many of the most radical proposals put forward over the last two years of debate on economic reform and ties them to a strict timetable that will give people confidence that the harsh measures at the outset would bring a better life within two years.

The program, in a major shift of power, would also force a devolution of decision-making from the central government to the governments of the country’s constituent republics and local authorities.

Yeltsin said he wants the Russian legislature to vote on the plan on Sept. 11--the same day Gorbachev and Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov will present their reform proposals to the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature.

Gorbachev told reporters last week that the more conservative plan prepared by Ryzhkov’s government has good points and should be integrated with the 500-day model.

Yeltsin replied Saturday that that would be impossible--the plans are too different, he said--and he called for Ryzhkov and his Cabinet to resign because the public had lost faith in them.

Russian Premier Ivan S. Silayev, explaining the 500-day plan to the republic’s legislature Monday, acknowledged that the Ryzhkov government had made sharp changes in its thinking, including the ideological acceptance of private property, once anathema to orthodox Communists.

But it retains a top-to-bottom approach instead of allowing maximum freedom for local bodies, Silayev said, and still relies on the old-style bureaucracy to promote reform.

“We are appealing to you to survey this set of programs attentively and discuss it as fast as possible,” Silayev said, calling for quick approval of the program.

Although the major points of the Yeltsin plan had been under discussion since his advisers first outlined it in June, the plan underwent major changes last month as it was fine-tuned in a commission jointly sponsored by Gorbachev and Yeltsin to outline urgent reforms, according to the independent Soviet news agency Interfax.

Silayev said the radical economists working on the plan were hindered by the outright refusal of several key government agencies that were asked to provide information, including the Defense Ministry, Foreign Trade Bank and State Planning Commission. Even direct instructions from Gorbachev failed, he said.

Gorbachev created a set of new task forces Monday to deal with the burning economic problems that cannot wait until the compromise plan he wants is worked out. The three commissions, created at a meeting of the Presidential Council, the top policy-making body, will tackle the shortages of virtually all consumer goods from cigarettes to bread, the growing gaps between suppliers and their customers and the increasingly stormy relations between Moscow and local authorities.