Co-Author of Radical Soviet Economic Plan Quits in Protest

The co-author of the radical “500-Day Plan” for a transition to a market economy in the Soviet Union resigned in protest Wednesday because President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has decided to implement a more conservative plan.

The official Soviet news agency Tass said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Grigory Yavlinsky announced his resignation to a joint session of the Russian Federation Parliament, saying it is unrealistic to expect the 500-day program to be implemented when 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 Soviet lawmakers Tuesday that maintains many of the conservative aspects and central controls contained in a rival plan favored by Prime Minister 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 Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin, with economist Stanislav S. Shatalin and Yavlinsky its main co-authors.

The Russian Federation Parliament has already approved the more radical plan, and many officials and economists have said it would be impossible to combine the two rival programs. Yeltsin compared the effort to “trying to mate a hedgehog with a snake.”

Meanwhile, unrest in the Ukraine, the second-largest Soviet republic, forced the resignation of Prime Minister Vitaly A. Masol, signaling an upsurge in the separatist movement in the Soviet breadbasket.

Street demonstrations, student hunger strikes and classroom boycotts also led the Ukrainian Parliament to embrace other radical demands, including the transfer of Communist Party property to the government and refusal to sign a new treaty of union with the Soviet central government, Tass reported.

Tens of thousands of students in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev celebrated their victory by marching Wednesday evening through October Revolution Square, which they call Independence Square.

In one of the few glimmers of good news for the Soviet economy in recent months, the government Wednesday reported a record grain crop. Officials put the just-completed harvest at 264 million tons, about 3 1/2 million tons more than the previous record in 1978.

The harvest was achieved despite bad weather and shortages of labor and transportation. Officials had called out students, factory workers and soldiers to help bring in the grain.