Which Economic Path? Soviet Party Chiefs Can’t Decide : Reform: The Central Committee leaves it to Gorbachev. He and legislators have the real power.

The leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, divided over proposals for radical changes in the country’s economy, could not decide at a strategy session this week what course should be followed and left the choice to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, top party officials said Wednesday.

Vladimir D. Ivashko, the party’s deputy general secretary, said a two-day meeting of the party’s policy-making Central Committee ended without endorsing either the radical program of rapid change favored by Gorbachev aides, or the more cautious plan of gradual changes advocated by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.

Although the committee reaffirmed the party’s commitment to developing a market economy in place of the present state-owned, government-managed system, Ivashko said there had been significant differences among its 401 members over the scope and pace of the changes.

This failure to make a decision was startling for a body that once made the basic policy decisions for the country. But it reflected the broader controversy and confusion here on how to transform the economy while minimizing the social trauma likely with fundamental change.

“It would be wrong in principle for the Communist Party’s Central Committee to act as though it were a branch of the Supreme Soviet (the country’s legislature) and indulge in comparisons of one or the other programs,” Ivashko argued.

“The president soon is to present a program considering all opinions in the Soviet Union. . . . It has not been presented yet, so there is no possibility to discuss it.”

Gorbachev is to put his revised program to the Supreme Soviet on Monday, but he has already begun to use his new authority to rule by decree to introduce changes in wholesale prices and to attempt to assure deliveries of goods ordered by state enterprises.

The Central Committee did adopt a resolution on “the political aspects” of the transition to a market economy, Ivashko said, but its publication will be delayed until agreement is reached on its wording. Also, the committee did not want to restrict Gorbachev’s freedom of political maneuver by binding him with terms of what would be accepted and what would be rejected.

Ivashko’s explanation only underscored the double quandary in which the party leadership found itself this week: Although faced with an issue of decisive importance for the nation, the Central Committee was unable to reach a conclusion--but it almost does not matter, for real power lies with Gorbachev and the country’s new legislative bodies.

Gorbachev appears from the partial accounts provided by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, to have been under attack through most of the plenum, as much for his leadership as for his policies.

“A clear and firm position is needed, Mikhail Sergeyevich, and your weighty word is necessary here if you want to have the party’s support,” Gorbachev was bluntly told by Yuri A. Prokofiev, first secretary of the Moscow party committee and a member of the party’s Politburo.

“Moscow’s Communists asked me to remind you that you are the general secretary of our party’s Central Committee, and its affairs must not be pushed aside because of the importance of presidential duties.”

Briefing Soviet and foreign journalists on the results of the meeting, Ivashko and Alexander S. Dzasokhov, another Politburo member, added to the impression of a beleaguered Gorbachev, saying they could not yet provide the committee’s resolution or even Gorbachev’s speech a day after the meeting ended.

Sentiment was stronger for the Ryzhkov plan, however, as committee members opposed private ownership of land, a key element in the radical program, and foresaw only a limited role for private entrepreneurship in industry and commerce.

“The (Central Committee’s) plenary session confirmed that our attitude is negative,” Ivashko said of the proposal to allow private ownership of land once again. “In Russia, this is dangerous.”

The issue has both economic and political importance, and it was featured during the two days of debates, according to accounts of the discussion published Wednesday in Moscow. The meeting opened Monday and ran until late Tuesday, a day longer than planned because of the heated debates.

Private ownership is a key element in the radical reform program proposed by Stanislav S. Shatalin, a member of Gorbachev’s Presidential Council, and it is intended to help bring about the agricultural resurgence the country needs in order to feed itself.

Who owns the land--the state or the farmer, or a collective body--also affects the ownership of natural resources and their allocation, the cost of industrial as well as agricultural production and, ultimately, the efficiency and character of the market economy the country develops.

But it has already become the defining issue on whether the reforms take place “within the socialist choice,” as Gorbachev assured the Central Committee they would, or whether they bring “the restoration of capitalism.”

“We need a mechanism that will help us eventually create diverse forms of collective, leasehold and investor ownership,” Gorbachev said in his closing remarks, as reported by Tass on Wednesday, “but everything should be controlled by the people.”

Ivashko said the committee could only agree to private ownership of land if it were approved in a nationwide referendum, and he predicted that voters would reject it. Proposed by Gorbachev last month, the referendum would quickly turn into a vote on the whole of the economic reform, thus raising the stakes considerably, for a “yes” majority could not be guaranteed.

Reflecting the conservatism of the meeting, Ivashko also stressed the limited nature of the privatization under the reforms. At most, 7% of production would be involved over the next decade, he said, and the state would remain the owner of virtually all major enterprises and would retain control of all important industries.

“The draft program for the transition to a market economy is the first-class funeral of socialism and communism,” V. T. Chuikov, a bricklayer from the Ukrainian city of Poltava, declared.