Gorbachev’s Economic Plan Draws New Fire

Leading members of the Soviet Communist Party on Tuesday continued to question President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s plans for fundamental economic changes, expressing concern about the additional turmoil they may bring and calling on Gorbachev to act decisively.

As participants in the party Central Committee’s two-day strategy session debated the still-controversial plans for developing a market economy here, Gorbachev came in for serious criticism himself, according to accounts of the closed-door meeting from the official Tass news agency.

The Soviet president, who is also the party’s general secretary, had told the conference at its opening Monday that the party’s ability to retain power and even to survive depended on how well it manages the transition to a market economy.

Gorbachev, who had convened the session to marshal support behind his political and economic reforms, is thought to have won the endorsement he sought late Tuesday in the committee’s closing resolution, which is due for publication today.

Gorbachev, who had the last as well as the first word at the conference, was criticized by conservatives for moving too quickly, bringing a buildup in social unrest, and by radicals for moving too slowly to effect real change, according to the Tass reports of speeches that were made at the meeting.

“Practical work on the transfer to the market must be accompanied by measures to stabilize the political, social, economic and legal situation,” Boris V. Gidaspov, the Communist Party leader in Leningrad, declared. “If this is not done, the possible consequences are not difficult to predict.”

And Ivan K. Polozkov, the conservative leader of the Russian Communist Party, said “only a very narrow group of people is aware of the essence of the reforms, and these people cannot reach an agreement even among themselves. Yet, once again, we are trying to persuade the people to trust what we say.”

Almost alone in his radicalism, Roy A. Medvedev, a longtime dissident historian who was rehabilitated by Gorbachev, challenged other members of the policy-making Central Committee to abandon their old socialist thinking and to take as a model the program with which West Germany rebuilt after World War II.

He said the Soviet Union should “ban Communist ideology, carry out an act of repentance by denouncing all those (who initiated socialism in the Soviet Union), shake off the burden of totalitarianism, bury (Bolshevik leader V. I.) Lenin’s ashes and put into museums all socialist and Communist symbols.”

While the Central Committee was meeting, Soviet lawmakers adopted legislation that makes all political parties equal and thus creates the foundation for the small but growing opposition groups emerging across the country.

Although non-Communist parties have existed for more than a year, they had no legal basis until the new legislation.