Resolve Crisis or Quit, Rightists Tell Gorbachev

The right wing in the Soviet Parliament issued an ultimatum to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday: Halt the country’s drift toward “civil war” within 30 days or face a formal demand from conservatives to resign.

“In all countries and systems, leaders who fail to achieve promised results--let alone those who actually worsen the situation--are replaced,” said Col. Viktor Alksnis, a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies. “It’s time we follow this global rule. . . . Voters directly demand we bring to accountability those who have brought the country to its current chaos.”

Such blistering remarks from the head of the parliamentary group Soyuz (Union), printed in the conservative daily Sovietskaya Rossiya, betrayed the shrinking authority enjoyed by Gorbachev among Communist Party stalwarts, conservatives and military officers, who largely blame his 5 1/2-year-old leadership for the near-collapse of the Soviet economy and numerous inter-ethnic conflicts.

As if caught in pincers, Gorbachev is also under assault from radicals like Russian populist leader Boris N. Yeltsin, who charge that the Kremlin leader has not done enough to end the hammerlock on power by the Communist Party and the Moscow-based national bureaucracy.

Yeltsin, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said Russia would agree to sign a new federal arrangement proposed by Gorbachev only if it guarantees “real sovereignty” for the federation and favorably resolves the question of ownership of Russia’s huge trove of diamonds, natural gas and other resources. Yeltsin has promised a formal answer to Gorbachev’s political reform plan next week.

To end a national paralysis of power, caused in large part by the disagreements between conservatives and radicals, Gorbachev has proposed that he take the place of the Soviet prime minister, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, and take hands-on control of the machinery of government, much the way the U.S. President chairs the Cabinet.

Claiming to speak for others in the Soyuz group, which says it has 500 members in the 2,250-member Congress, Alksnis in his Sovietskaya Rossiya interview gave a damning indictment of the growing list of Soviet woes, directly blaming what he called Gorbachev’s irresolute leadership.

“Mikhail Sergeyevich has undisputed merits in starting perestroika (his program of reforms), he is a consummate master of communication and compromise, he is a magnificent man,” Alksnis said. “But he has failed to demonstrate the true statesman’s approach, the required firmness, consistency, the ability to bring matters to their logical end.

“We can no longer tolerate this,” Alksnis continued. “Mikhail Sergeyevich must prove now that he can solve the problems and not only talk about their solutions.”

In raw, bruising terms that once would have been inconceivable for a Soviet lawmaker talking about his leader, Alksnis said Gorbachev should be given 30 days to produce results or be forced to leave office. That time is “quite enough for determining whether good words are backed up with good deeds,” he said.

“If the president begins, at last, to make good his promises to avert the disintegration of the country, begins to enforce law and order, we shall render every possible assistance,” Alksnis said. “If again, things are limited to verbal maneuvering, we shall demand his resignation.”

Claiming that “a veritable civil war is heating up,” he demanded that Gorbachev impose direct presidential rule to bring nationalist leaderships in some of the Soviet republics to heel.

The deadline given by the colonel--whose grandfather, Red Army air commander Yakov Alksnis, was baselessly purged in 1938--coincides with the next session of the Congress, which opens Dec. 17.

The Congress has the theoretical power to impeach Gorbachev, but such a move would require that two-thirds of its members agree that he had violated the law or the Soviet Constitution--a groundswell in anti-Gorbachev sentiment that at present is inconceivable. Alksnis did not say whether he would move for impeachment were Gorbachev to disregard the Soyuz group’s call to resign.

Meanwhile, Yeltsin on Wednesday signed a cooperation treaty with Kazakhstan, the second-largest Soviet republic, further widening the formal ties that Russia has established with other republics independent of the Moscow-based central government.

Yeltsin, who this week also signed a formal 10-year treaty with the Ukraine, said such agreements should be the basis of a new, freer Soviet Union. But, speaking in Paris on the final day of the East-West summit, Gorbachev voiced hope for a national consensus broad enough to encompass both himself and Yeltsin.

“I don’t see any obstacles for cooperation on the basis of the understanding of this responsibility,” Gorbachev said.