His Economists Assail Gorbachev’s Indecision : Reform: Key advisers say the Soviet economy will get worse because of the president’s inconsistent policies.

Top economic advisers to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev accused him of indecisiveness and inconsistency Sunday and said the Soviet economy will get even worse as a result of his policies.

Among the 12 leading economists who published their views in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda was Stanislav S. Shatalin, a member of Gorbachev’s Presidential Council and the author of the “500-Day Plan” for rapid economic reform that Gorbachev and Soviet lawmakers recently rejected.

It was Shatalin’s first major public statement since his plan was voted down in favor of a more gradual transition from communism to a market system.

The 12 warned that the Soviet Union is headed toward hyper-inflation and a painful transition.

“The inflation spiral will spin faster and faster, the collapse of the consumer market will increase, the economy will be further and further from a condition of equilibrium,” the economists said. “This will be the price we will pay for indecisiveness and inconsistency in choosing our path in September, 1990.

“The situation continues to worsen,” they wrote. “The planned stabilizing measures have already become insufficient. People are losing faith both in the reform and in the authorities.”

After supporting Shatalin’s plan in September, Gorbachev backpedaled and proposed milder guidelines for economic change, fearing that the more radical measures would work too great a hardship on the country’s 290 million people. The Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, adopted this approach last month.

But the 12 economists, who included Gorbachev’s own economics adviser, Nikolai Y. Petrakov, said that the milder measures, which had been proposed by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, cannot rescue the Soviet economy.

One of the essential weaknesses of the Gorbachev plan, the economists asserted, is its failure to quickly prop up the ruble, the Soviet currency, which is not freely convertible to foreign currencies.

The “500-Day Plan,” which called for stabilization of the economy by introducing the market forces of supply and demand, would have made recovery of the financial system the priority.

“The transition to market relations now will take place not through stabilization of the ruble,” the economists said, “but through inflation and belated measures aimed at overcoming inflation, which will turn out to be quite painful.”

The article warned people not to be fooled by the fact that the phraseology in Gorbachev’s guidelines is similar to the phraseology of the “500-Day Plan.”

The economists also predicted that the current economic reforms could lead to hyper-inflation if retail prices are increased and those with low incomes receive compensation through higher pay, pensions or welfare payments.

Inflation is predicted to run at 18%, the government newspaper Izvestia reported Sunday, and in the private sector prices are already rising rapidly.

Prices in the farmers’ markets, where many people buy much of their food, were 18% higher in the first half of 1990 than during the same period last year. In July, they increased by 29%, in August by 30% and in September by 34%.

A major reason for the inflation, the newspaper said, is that the government keeps increasing its production of rubles, creating a situation in which too many rubles are chasing too few goods. In the first nine months of 1990, Izvestia reported, 1.7 times as much money was issued than in the same time last year.

In their article, the economists also criticized as misleading the adoption last week by the Russian Federation’s Supreme Soviet, or legislature, of a 500-day program for transition to a market-based system.

“The press took the statement by (Russian Prime Minister Ivan S.) Silayev for real and announced the beginning of a 500-day plan,” the economists said.