Gorbachev Set to Use Sweeping New Powers : Soviet Union: The first steps will be to stabilize the economy with strict control on government spending.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is ready to use his sweeping new powers, which enable him to rule by decree, to begin the development of a market economy in the Soviet Union and to undertake other radical reforms, his chief economic adviser said Tuesday.

Nikolai Y. Petrakov, who himself is a leading advocate of rapid and radical transformation of the economy, said that many of the proposed presidential decrees have already been drafted and will be issued as Gorbachev decides the last outstanding issues in the program.

The first steps, Petrakov said, will be to stabilize the economy with strict controls on governmental spending, borrowing and creation of money to lay the basis for the “500-day program” aimed at establishing a market economy within a year and a half.

Further measures envision the privatization of substantial segments of state-owned industry, agriculture and commerce and the replacement of central planning with the market forces of supply and demand, he said.

“The president has devised his program, and he will be in charge of elaborating that program,” Petrakov told a Moscow news conference. “You know where his sympathies lie. He now has the extraordinary powers to execute those reforms.”

Many of these decrees were originally drafted early last summer in anticipation that Gorbachev would use special powers that he had been given earlier by the Supreme Soviet, but the measures were held in abeyance as support grew for faster and more radical changes.

Petrakov sought to allay widespread fears that the additional authority Gorbachev won Monday from the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, gave him greater power than any Kremlin leader has had since the death of dictator Josef Stalin and are open to wide abuse.

Gorbachev needs the ability to rule by decree, Petrakov argued, because the reforms will require “quick, prompt and sometimes immediate decisions, for example on prices or the budget, as well as energetic implementation of the reforms themselves.”

“To convene Parliament and discuss everything each time would be impossible,” he said. “That would destroy the reforms. Fast action will be required. There is no other motive.”

The Supreme Soviet delegated its legislative powers to Gorbachev for the next 18 months to issue decrees on the country’s economic structure, its financial system, prices, wages, property and the national budget. He is also authorized to take actions he believes necessary to maintain law and order.

Petrakov expressed surprise at the strong opposition of Boris N. Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, to Gorbachev’s additional powers. The powers will be used, he said, to implement the same fast-paced reforms that Yeltsin supports.

“It was a reaction based on rumor,” Petrakov said, adding that Gorbachev has no intention of disbanding the governments of the country’s 15 republics or using his authority beyond the economic reforms.

In granting Gorbachev the additional powers, however, lawmakers asked him to combine into a single program for their review in mid-October his proposals and those of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov calling for a far more gradual transition.

“The two programs are diametrically opposed in philosophy and concept,” Petrakov asserted. “The president’s program starts with stabilization, with a rigid fiscal policy, the strengthening of the ruble and control of the money supply.

“The government, on the other hand, is not at all embarrassed by the rapid issuance of more money and the growth of the money supply. There are similarities, but we start with differences.”

Petrakov, a contributor to the 500-day program, known as the Shatalin Plan after Stanislav S. Shatalin, its principal author and another Gorbachev adviser, said he could not see how it could ultimately be combined with Ryzhkov’s far more conservative proposals.