Gorbachev ‘Irresolute,’ Soviet Rightists Charge : Politics: Despite concessions, he remains under attack. Shevardnadze is criticized over the gulf crisis.

After bringing down the interior minister, an ally of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, right-wing lawmakers trained their fire Monday on the job performance of Gorbachev himself and began agitating to get Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, another top Gorbachev protege, fired for his handling of the Persian Gulf crisis.

Gorbachev is an “irresolute man,” and must be pushed and shoved into taking the tough measures the Soviet Union’s current predicament demands, Col. Nikolai S. Petrushenko, a leader of the Soyuz (Union) legislative bloc, said. Under Gorbachev’s leadership, Petrushenko said in contempt, “we have been trailing behind events all the time.”

Citing acts and pronouncements by Gorbachev in recent days, other members of the Supreme Soviet discerned a sharp turn to the right, although others say this may be only a maneuver to appease conservative critics. For instance, Gorbachev last week spoke out against the full-scale introduction of private property, a controversial issue in this still officially Communist country.

Recently, Gorbachev has also stressed the leading role of the Communist Party in society--traditional phrasing that hadn’t been heard from the ruling Kremlin circles in weeks--and decreed that the country’s rebellious republics can no longer be allowed to challenge Moscow’s military power, particularly by meddling with conscription.

On Sunday, in what appears to be his biggest sop to the increasingly unruly right, Gorbachev dismissed Interior Minister Vadim V. Bakatin, one of the high-profile advocates of perestroika reforms, and replaced him with Boris K. Pugo, chairman of the party’s Central Control Commission and former KGB chief in Latvia.

Bakatin, 53, a onetime party official from the Kuzbass coal region of Siberia, had been under withering criticism from conservatives for failing to halt ethnic unrest in the Transcaucasus, Central Asia and Moldova.

Members of Soyuz, who demanded Bakatin’s firing during a weekend meeting in Moscow, were jubilant at the news, although official reports noted that the discharged minister has been given another, as yet unspecified, post.

“Because of his incompetence--he is a former party functionary, with no prior experience in law enforcement--Bakatin facilitated decomposition of the system in the sense that it ceased to function on the national level,” said air force Col. Victor I. Alksnis, a Latvian lawmaker and outspoken Gorbachev critic who is parliamentary coordinator for Soyuz.

Now, law enforcement officials in outlying republics no longer take orders from Moscow, Alksnis said, “and the blood that is being spilled in ethnic conflicts around the country--the deaths of hundreds of people--are on Bakatin.”

Their frustration and anger evident over their country’s multiple problems, Alksnis, Petrushenko and other Soyuz leaders who met with reporters in the Kremlin demanded that Gorbachev address a special session of the Supreme Soviet on the Persian Gulf crisis, which they proposed be held Jan. 5-10, and they accused Shevardnadze of exceeding his authority.

Last Thursday, the Kremlin joined the United States in a U.N. Security Council vote authorizing the use of force to oust Iraq from Kuwait if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has not pulled his occupying forces out by Jan. 15. That action aroused the wrath of Soyuz, although it has condemned Iraq’s aggression.

“We are categorically opposed to any Soviet military participation in the crisis,” Petrushenko said.

In a written statement, Soyuz demanded that Shevardnadze account for a published report in which he was quoted as saying that if one of the approximately 3,000 Soviets still said to be in Iraq is harmed, Gorbachev would have the right to take unspecified, retaliatory action “without advice from the Supreme Soviet.”

Soyuz demanded to be told where such a presidential prerogative was to be found in the constitution and who had authorized Shevardnadze to make such remarks.

Last month, Alksnis said he and some other members of Soyuz, which claims 478 members in the 2,250-seat Congress of People’s Deputies, would give Gorbachev 30 days to right the country’s ills or demand at the next session of the Congress, which begins Dec. 17, that he resign.

The air force colonel backed off that statement a bit Monday, denying that he had delivered an “ultimatum” on behalf of the Soyuz group, but he made it clear that conservatives will continue to hold Gorbachev accountable, with a showdown possible in mid-month.

“He (Gorbachev) should understand that he has exhausted the credit of trust,” Alksnis said. “If he fails to take resolute action within the period left before the Congress, the question of his presidency might arise there.”