Muscovites Drafted to Harvest Potatoes : Soviet Union: The government declares a state of emergency to get vital harvest in.

Soviet authorities, attempting to hold together the country’s rapidly disintegrating economy, on Sunday declared a state of emergency around the capital--to harvest potatoes.

With a harvest so far of less than 10% of the half a million tons of potatoes that Moscow will need over the winter, the government formally proclaimed a state of emergency in the surrounding region, allowing it to draft factory and office workers to assist farmers in gathering potatoes and other vegetables.

Ivan S. Silayev, prime minister of the Russian Federation, largest of the Soviet Union’s constituent republics, said on television Sunday that the threat of no potatoes, cabbage or other vegetables this winter--and the unrest that would result--is so severe that the government had no choice but to take emergency action.

Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, the Soviet prime minister, earlier described the faltering potato harvest as “Problem No. 1” in an economy that he said was in a critical decline that threatened the country’s economic viability and political stability.

“A lot will depend on its solution, on how we enter the winter and on what we manage to store,” Ryzhkov said of the harvest problems. “A lot is being written that we will have a hungry winter without potatoes and vegetables. This all depends on us. We have the crops on the land. We simply have to take them in.”

The declaration is expected to require government offices, state enterprises and other organizations in Moscow to dispatch thousands of workers to the countryside for the next two weeks to assist state and collective farms around the capital. Large groups of students and soldiers are already there.

Only 38,000 tons of potatoes have been harvested in the Moscow region so far this year--compared to 279,000 tons at the same time last year and the 555,000 tons that the city requires through the winter.

With bread supplies problematic and meat almost unavailable, a potato shortage could be catastrophic, especially in the dark winter months when they become the basis of most families’ main meals.

And what is true of potatoes is also true of carrots, cabbages, beets, onions and the dozen other autumn vegetables now being harvested for the winter.

In most areas of the country, only half of the vegetable fields have been harvested, according to government reports. Some potatoes and other vegetables are already beginning to rot in the rain-sodden fields, with only 10 to 15 days remaining before the first serious frosts.

“We must say to everyone--if we want to have potatoes and vegetables, we must go to the fields and help the villagers,” Ryzhkov said last week, advising of the government’s intention to declare a state of emergency to gather the harvest. “We need to mobilize working collectives and even close some offices for a time. In two or three weeks, it will be too late.”

Although this year’s crops have generally been good to excellent, the rapid breakdown of the Soviet economic system has meant shortages of fuel and parts for the harvesting equipment, fewer urban workers assigned to help the farmers, no transport for the crops that were harvested and a reluctance by farmers to work harder when there is little to buy with the money earned.

The potato harvest has become particularly contentious with radicals and conservatives accusing each other of trying to sabotage the harvest for political purposes. The radicals are alleged to want increased popular dissatisfaction with the system to heighten the momentum for change; the conservatives are said to want to demonstrate the need for a more authoritarian approach.

Silayev, now a leading advocate of radical reform, asserted that, had farmers been given their own land and the market forces of supply and demand been allowed to operate, there would be no problem now, lamenting the conservative opposition that has slowed action on these and related issues.

“If these plots of 10, 20 or 30 hectares belong to private farmers, we would have no problems today,” Silayev said on a visit to a potato field. “We are still working out a draft law on land reform. It is really a battle around this issue (of private ownership of land). . . .

“Well, here we are with this collective ownership of land, sitting with you in this mud with ungathered potatoes and carrots.”

The reality, however, is that the economic reforms have through extensive decentralization effectively demolished the old state-managed, centrally planned system, but they had not created a new, market-oriented replacement.

“We have destroyed communism,” the avant-garde weekly newspaper Moscow News commented, “but we have not yet built capitalism.”