Soviet Official Quits Over Economic Plan

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Grigory Yavlinsky, co-author of the 500-day plan for a transition to a market economy, resigned in protest today because the central government is intent on implementing a more conservative plan.

Tass news agency said Yavlinsky announced his resignation to a joint session of the Russian Parliament, saying it is unrealistic to expect the 500-day program to be implemented when Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the central government do not support it.

Gorbachev, who had earlier voiced support for the 500-day plan, submitted a compromise proposal to Parliament committees Tuesday that maintains many of the conservative aspects and central controls from a rival plan favored by Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.

The 500-day plan is a blueprint for a quicker, more radical move to a market economy. It was drafted by a commission set up by Gorbachev and Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin, with economist Stanislav Shatalin and Yavlinsky its main co-authors.

Russia’s Parliament has already approved the more radical plan and many officials and economists have said it would be impossible to form a workable blueprint by combining the two radically different rival plans. Yeltsin compared the effort to “trying to mate a hedgehog with a snake.”

The compromise proposal was submitted to parliamentary committees for their consideration Tuesday and will be formally presented to the entire Parliament in a speech by Gorbachev Friday, presidential spokesman Vitaly Ignatenko said.

In another development today, Tass said the Ukrainian prime minister has decided to resign following huge street marches, classroom boycotts and hunger strikes by students opposed to his government.

In the largest demonstration during the two-week protest, as many as 100,000 students reportedly marched today down the main street of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

Tass said Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk told the republic’s legislature this morning that the prime minister, Vitaly Masol, 62, intends to resign after 4 1/2 tumultuous months in office.