Gorbachev Seeks Referendum on Reform Plan : Soviet Union: Citizens would be asked views on private ownership of land. Victory would give him a mandate for changes, but it could delay program.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, hesitating over a key element of his economic reform program, called Monday for a national referendum on the private ownership of land and the decollectivization of agriculture and private use of natural resources that it would bring.

As Soviet lawmakers began what was to be the final week of debate on the country’s economic reforms, Gorbachev sought to steel them for the difficult decisions ahead, but put the controversial program’s adoption in doubt through his own doubts about some of its most radical measures.

While declaring his commitment to the development of a market economy where the forces of supply and demand will replace central planning, Gorbachev denied with vigor that this would lead to capitalism. The state will maintain sufficient controls, he said, to ensure achievement of “the socialist choice,” he said.

While supporting the inclusion of private enterprise into the Soviet economy on a scale unprecedented since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution brought the Communist Party to power, he said that state-owned enterprises would continue to predominate.

And, while the program he has submitted for adoption is based in part on the private ownership of land to spur agricultural development and rational use of natural resources, Gorbachev said he himself was uncertain.

“This is one of the fundamental issues,” Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, “and it seems to me that it must be resolved in a referendum.

“This is too serious a problem, comrades, to be decided in offices, in discussions or conference halls, even in such an important one where we are working now.

“Will we have private ownership of land or not? It is the sovereign right of the people to decide, and it can only be done in a referendum. This is my firm opinion.”

Victory in a referendum on such a controversial but fundamental issue would give Gorbachev an unchallengeable mandate for bolder reforms, but it might also bring a divisive national debate and delay the program’s implementation half a year.

Gorbachev also rejected calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, now the target of widespread criticism over his management of the economy and his own program of gradual reforms.

Such an upheaval in the country’s political leadership would “involve us in deep political battles and heighten the confrontation in society,” Gorbachev said, rejecting as “completely unacceptable” demands at weekend rallies that Ryzhkov resign or be dismissed.

Gorbachev’s own doubts, taken together and coupled with a probable referendum, the country’s first, put into serious question the political compact that he had made with Boris N. Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, the country’s largest republic, and raised the prospect of a constitutional crisis as Yeltsin proceeds with the reforms as agreed on Oct. 1.

Regardless of the central government’s decision, Russia would proceed with the implementation of the radical program, the republic’s premier, Ivan Silayev, told a news conference later Monday.

“With or without them, we will go ahead,” Silayev said. “We have declared the sovereignty of Russia, and this is our right.”

Every republic except Estonia had joined with Russia in formulating the new program, Silayev said, and the central government is now the only barrier to its implementation.

With operational control of perhaps two-thirds of the Soviet economy, the Russian Federation could force the central government into a showdown on economic reform with conflicting orders to industrial managers, banks, wholesale and retail distributors and transporters.

Gorbachev did reiterate his own qualified support for the radical program, drafted by Stanislav S. Shatalin, one of his economic advisers, and he acknowledged that the country’s economic crisis had grown increasingly grave.

But even as he spoke of the need for quick, decisive measures, he suggested that many of the criticisms of the Shatalin program, known as the “500-day plan” for its timetable of rapid change, should be studied once again and reassessed.

Opposed by many government planners, industrial managers and political conservatives as too risky, the program would privatize much of the state-owned Soviet economy, end the government’s central planning, accelerate the development of all-but-absent markets, force unprofitable enterprises to close, shift millions of workers out of unproductive jobs into new ones after retraining and cut spending on defense, the security services and foreign aid.

“There are fears and apprehension in society that the transition to the market will mean a significant drop in the people’s living standards,” Gorbachev said. “We must clarify all these issues so that the people understand what we are talking about.”

Shatalin, the author of the radical program, immediately opposed the proposed referendum on private ownership of land as simply a way of avoiding responsibility and unduly delaying implementation of the reforms.

“If all our lives, we make the heavy decisions by referendum, then we are putting the responsibility on the people,” he said. “It is not the way politicians should speak.”

Leonid I. Abalkin, the deputy premier who drafted the rival “gradual” reform, warned that under the radical plan 25% of the country’s collective and state farms, which together produce about 35% of the agricultural produce, would go bankrupt, reducing food supplies even further.