Soviets to Crack Down on Black Market : Crime: The government demands legislation to punish speculators who are rapidly taking control of the crumbling economy.

Warning that half of the consumer goods produced in the Soviet Union now reach their buyers through the black market, the government Monday demanded tough new legislation against speculators, and police announced a nationwide crackdown on the “shadow economy.”

Valentina I. Semenko, secretary of the legal affairs committee of the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, said the black marketeers, some of them organized in Mafia-like gangs but many others functioning as individual operators, are rapidly taking control of major aspects of the disintegrating Soviet economy.

With their economic power, the black marketeers are driving up prices, she said, and this is contributing substantially to growing social unrest and an increase in crime here.

“The scale of organized crime is beyond our predictions,” Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, chairman of the KGB, or State Security Committee, told a news conference. “Gangs have appeared with ties--roots, even--in the shadow economy. They have vast material resources and funds for investment. They even have the ability to gain political power.”

Kryuchkov said there is real concern at top levels of the Soviet leadership that organized crime could subvert the development of a market economy, which is to replace state ownership, central planning and government management over the next two years, and gain control of large sectors of industry and commerce.

“I believe that the shadow economy will be supplanted by law and market relations,” Vadim V. Bakatin, the Soviet interior minister, told the news conference. “But it is clear that we will have to get through a transition.

“We will have to have intermediate legislation for this period to support economic development while we hold criminal tendencies in check. Theft and embezzlement should not have a place in the new economy, let alone be the heart of it,” he added.

Bakatin and Kryuchkov said the combined resources of their agencies, among the most powerful in the Soviet Union, will be thrown into a combined drive against economic crime, especially that of the hundreds of rapidly growing, Mafia-like gangs.

“We have got to come to grips with them because our state suffers great losses,” Kryuchkov said, noting that the gangs have begun operating nationwide and even abroad. “You just cannot imagine how much is involved. I estimate it runs into the billions of dollars.”

The government’s most immediate concern, officials said, is to curb consumer prices, which are rising an estimated 6% to 8% a month when black market sales are included.

Semenko, speaking to the Supreme Soviet, said the government wants stronger laws to prevent speculators from buying goods in short supply--now virtually everything--at low, state-controlled prices and reselling them on the open market.

Under the legislation introduced Monday, anyone convicted of “speculation,” which is defined as buying goods at controlled prices and reselling them at a profit, could be imprisoned for up to three years, with confiscation of their property. Major operators could be sentenced to five to 10 years.

Without such a stringent measure, Semenko said, the government will not be able to stabilize the consumer market and manage the planned transition to a market economy over the next two years. The present legislation, dating to the 1920s, is not strong enough, she said, adding:

“It is time to protect reliably the population from rampaging black-market prices, to defend our system of low state prices from this onslaught.”

Vasily P. Trushin, the deputy interior minister, told the deputies that in a survey on Aug. 1 only 20 of 1,100 basic goods were readily available in Soviet stores--and that supplies have deteriorated sharply since then.

These shortages, he said, show the results of the speculation, for most of the missing goods were diverted into the black market.

Although the legislation won preliminary approval, it was questioned by a number of deputies, who thought it contradicted in concept and practice the development of a market economy. The law, once enacted, will punish the very actions--buying low and selling high--that provided the dynamism of the market.

Andrei Orlov, the parliamentary observer for the news agency Tass, commented that the bill--ironically, the first piece of legislation to implement the development of a market economy--will probably be debated hotly because fundamental principles are involved and the question of prices is extremely sensitive.