Soviet Premier Suffers Vote of No Confidence

Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, one of the architects of perestroika (restructuring) , came under increased pressure Thursday to accept responsibility for the Soviet Union’s severe economic crisis and resign.

The legislature of the Russian Federation, the largest of the country’s 15 constituent republics, in a formal vote of no confidence, demanded Ryzhkov’s resignation and that of his whole Cabinet. The Russian lawmakers called for the immediate formation of a “government of national trust” to oversee the reform of the Soviet economy.

In an appeal to the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, the Russian lawmakers denounced Ryzhkov and his ministers as “unable to lead the country from its extremely grave economic crisis.” The resolution was approved by a vote of 164 to 1, with 16 abstentions.

With the Supreme Soviet scheduled to resume discussion today of two rival reform programs, one proposed by Ryzhkov and the other by a group of radical economists, the unprecedented no-confidence vote in the central government will sharpen the debate over the nation’s future.

The choice before the Supreme Soviet is fundamental--what kind of economy and social system will the country have--and the debate is intense. Ryzhkov is advocating a five-year transition to a market economy, and the vote against him was also, perhaps primarily, a rejection of gradual reform and a demand for radical reform.

“In his five years in power, the country has become poor,” one lawmaker said, listing the growing shortages of food, consumer goods and everyday necessities such as matches and soap. “In any other country in the world, in such conditions, the government would resign.”

As prime minister, Ryzhkov not only manages the Soviet Union’s vast government bureaucracy but also most of the state-run economy. Even if the Supreme Soviet approves plans for the extensive privatization of state enterprises, he would be a pivotal figure in implementing that and other economic reforms.

Ryzhkov, a successful industrial manager before he came to Moscow, has virtually staked his job, however, on the adoption of his “moderately radical” plan of gradual transition to a market economy.

If the radicals’ “500-day program” is approved, as appears likely, he has indicated that he would step aside rather than implement proposals that he believes will plunge the country into chaos in an effort to establish a full market economy in a year and a half.

“Psychologically, the people are not ready for it,” he said last week of the rival Shatalin program, named for economist Stanislav S. Shatalin, an adviser to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. “This will severely hit the vital interests of the population. . . . If his program remains unchanged, then I will not be able to (continue as prime minister).”

Ryzhkov’s resignation, whether in protest over the radicalization of the reforms or in acceptance of responsibility for the deepening crisis, would mark a fundamental shift in perestroika, a change of gears at the end of one phase and the start of another.

Already, political gossip has focused on possible successors--Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, one of Gorbachev’s closest allies; Leningrad Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak, a law professor and one of the new breed of Soviet politicians; Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov, a radical economist; and Vadim V. Bakatin, a fast-rising Communist Party official now serving as interior minister.

But Ryzhkov’s departure would also mean that perestroika had reached that point, common in the scenarios of many revolutions, when its initiators are overtaken by the movement they launched.

Until now, Ryzhkov has retained the confidence of Gorbachev, who has defended him against the recent attacks--but expressed his own preference for the Shatalin program. Gorbachev has indicated that he hopes the Shatalin program can be modified enough to satisfy some of Ryzhkov’s concerns and to provide a face-saving way for him to remain in the government.

A mechanical engineer by training, Ryzhkov worked for 25 years in the giant Uralmash heavy machine-building complex in Sverdlovsk, rising from the factory floor to head the enterprise. He was one of the “Siberians,” as they were known, who were promoted into the leadership after the death of President Leonid I. Brezhnev in an attempt to end the top-level corruption that had flourished under Brezhnev.

He and Gorbachev worked together as secretaries of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in the early 1980s, when the first ideas of perestroika took shape, and Gorbachev promoted him to prime minister in September, 1985. He was 56 at the time and replaced a man who was 80.

A figure of quiet authority and unusual competence, Ryzhkov has helped Gorbachev plan and execute his sweeping reforms over the last five years. Although he has stood in the background, acquiring an image of being “soft and irresolute, cool, imperturbable, indifferent,” as one Soviet journalist wrote, Ryzhkov, who will be 61 next week, was also a man who made things happen.

“I never shout people down,” he said recently of his dealings with those in the bureaucracy who opposed the reforms and tried to obstruct them, “but I do not know what leniency is.”

Ryzhkov has nonetheless become the No. 1 target for increasingly harsh criticism as the Soviet economic crisis has deepened in recent months. Last May, he proposed price increases, including a threefold jump in bread prices, and was blamed for the waves of panic buying and the small “tobacco riots” over cigarette shortages that followed.

His five-year timetable for transition to a market economy was derided as “stealing hope from the people”; the rival plan promised real change within a year and plentiful supplies of food and consumer goods within a year and a half. As for the old promises of communism, he told an interviewer in the summer, “It is a goal so remote that it is beyond the foreseeable future.”

Loyal to Gorbachev, Ryzhkov has absorbed attacks that might have been aimed at the president and perestroika. Only in recent weeks has he complained about the unfairness of accepting responsibility for all that has gone wrong in the reforms.

“There are events that are beyond our control, you should understand, and there are other people in the leadership who have also shaped our decisions,” he testily told a group of deputies earlier this month at the Supreme Soviet.

“Perestroika is not based on divine revelation, nor is it a program brought down from heaven by the Archangel Gabriel,” Ryzhkov continued. “These are the plans of men--mortals, one and all--and we have made some mistakes, serious but honest. We must move ahead, weighing the urgent need for change against the dangers of further errors.”

Such caution has prompted many of the current attacks. Led by Boris N. Yeltsin, the populist politician who now heads the Russian Federation, Ryzhkov’s critics accuse him of trying to salvage the Soviet system of state socialism despite its clear collapse, an effort they allege is meant to preserve the privileges of the Communist Party’s ruling elite.

Ryzhkov was accused earlier this month by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda of quietly buying the state-owned country house on the outskirts of Moscow where he has lived and worked in recent years. The charge was that he got far more land than others would be entitled to and that he was hypocritical for buying the house after criticizing privatization. The sale was legal, the paper admitted, and the price, about $75,200 at official exchange rates, was fair.

The prime minister accused political opponents of trying to smear him in order to discredit his arguments against the radicals’ reform program.

Earlier this year, radicals had suggested that he was benefiting personally from the controversial deals of a cooperative enterprise established to sell surplus military goods overseas. Ryzhkov said that this was also an underworld attempt to pressure him or even force him from office.