Yeltsin Calls for Referendum on Gorbachev

Boris N. Yeltsin called today for a referendum in his vast Russian republic on Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s performance as president.

Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, largest of the 15 Soviet republics, said his region is ready to conduct such a referendum.

Speaking in Kiev, where he was to sign a treaty with the Ukraine, Yeltsin said the referendum would also ask Russians whether they have confidence in the central government.

“Russia is ready to hold a referendum on two questions--the entire presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev and on faith in the central government,” he told the Ukrainian Parliament.

Such a plebiscite would ask more than half the Soviet Union’s 290 million people to cast judgment on Gorbachev’s performance, possibly laying the basis for a more direct challenge from Yeltsin.

Yeltsin censured Gorbachev’s new plan, announced Saturday, to take charge of all government ministries as a bid to increase his personal power and a betrayal of promised decentralization.

Yeltsin compared Gorbachev’s recent steps to the failed rule of the late Nikita S. Khrushchev, “when the center tried to recentralize everything and the reforms died.”

The burly Siberian also took issue with Gorbachev’s recent decree requiring enterprises to give up most of their hard currency earnings to the central government, calling it the “biggest mistake” of Gorbachev’s eight-month presidency.

Yeltsin said the hard currency order, if implemented, “will force us to our knees.”