Gorbachev Calls for Referendum on Soviet Unity

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, battling to hold the Soviet Union together through an ever-deepening political and economic crisis, called Monday for a national referendum to decide whether the nation’s constituent republics will join to form a new federal state or break away.

Warning that the Soviet Union’s very existence is now imperiled, Gorbachev said: “In going away from extreme centralization, we must not allow the union to be turned into something amorphous or to disintegrate. This would hit hard at the destinies of millions of people and at the whole world.”

Gorbachev, acknowledging the growing chaos across the country, also asked the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament, to approve a series of constitutional amendments restructuring the Soviet government and increasing his powers.

“If we have strong government, tight discipline and control over the implementation of our decisions, then we shall be able to ensure normal food supplies, rein in crime and stop interethnic strife,” Gorbachev said. “The most important thing now in overcoming the crisis is to enforce order in the country,” he added.

“If we fail, then deepening discord, a rampage of dark forces and the disintegration of the state become inevitable.”

To deal with the economic crisis, Gorbachev sketched a series of further reforms intended first to stabilize the fragmenting Soviet economy and then to shift it gradually from state ownership and central planning to free enterprise and market forces, but they appeared to delay more than accelerate the changes.

The Soviet president described the present food shortages in Moscow, Leningrad and other major industrial centers as among the gravest of the country’s problems. It results from “the unprecedented breakdown in mutual deliveries of goods between regions, the disruption of economic ties and the collapse of all normal relations between cities and the countryside,” he said.

“What is happening now is not simply insufficient output. It is a consequence of disorder, lack of control, criminal negligence and irresponsibility toward the people. . . . The indignation among the people is reaching the critical level.”

Assessing the overall state of the nation, Gorbachev has never been more stark, and he acknowledged that the increasing criticism of his leadership by many here has been correct.

“The current situation in the country is grave,” he said. “The crisis continues to deepen in the national economy, in political and social spheres and especially in interethnic relations. Stability and public order have been undermined. Each citizen, every family, workers and the entire country feel these effects. Society is greatly concerned about today and the future.

“More and more the question is being asked whether the line toward perestroika has been chosen correctly. Are we following the right beacons and striking to achieve the right goals? Have we swerved off course? We are living through a truly critical moment. The great cause that we embraced five years ago and that has created conditions for a deep transformation of the country and the entire world is now under an obvious threat.”

Yet with this acknowledgement of the country’s problems, the admission that his own errors had contributed to them and a call for “discipline, civil accord and selfless work,” Gorbachev sought to rally the country out of what is perhaps its greatest crisis--a crisis of confidence in his leadership, in perestroika, as his reforms are known, and in itself.

“We should neither give up ourselves nor scare other people with talk of impending catastrophe,” he said at the conclusion of his hourlong address to the congress.

In an appeal to conservatives, first of all, Gorbachev promised to take the “most resolute actions without delay” as president to pull the country out of the crisis.

“It is not a question of reverting to the long-condemned and rejected methods of unlimited dictatorship and arbitrariness,” he said. “What I mean is power acting on the basis of law and capable of ensuring stability and civil peace and thus overcoming the crisis.”

Even before Gorbachev spoke, a deputy from the Communist Party, which Gorbachev heads, called for a vote of no confidence in him and sought his replacement as president.

“Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) has no moral right to lead the country any longer,” declared Sazhi Umalatova, 37, a foreman at a machine tool factory and a member of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature. “You brought devastation, hunger, cold, blood and tears. Innocent people are perishing.”

Her resolution was excluded from the agenda of the session, 1,288 votes to 426, but the support it did gain demonstrated the discontent with Gorbachev among the deputies, who were elected in 1989 and have generally done his bidding.

Gorbachev faced further criticism, even from his supporters, as deputies began to debate his proposals Monday afternoon. More than 430 deputies have asked to speak in the debate. The congress, scheduled to last 10 days, was convened to approve the draft “union treaty” and to amend the Soviet constitution to provide for a presidential system of government.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan and a possible Gorbachev nominee for the new post of Soviet vice president, called for faster, more radical economic reforms rather than the government’s planned stabilization program.

Yuri Blokhin, the leader of the conservative Soyuz group, castigated perestroika for bringing the country to the brink of collapse and leading to the likely breakup of the Soviet Union as it is now constituted.

And Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov, a radical economist, objected to increasing Gorbachev’s powers and proposed instead a political compact among the country’s republics to tackle the problems.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, the largest republic, said that Gorbachev had brought no fresh thinking to the congress, and he dismissed the proposed referendum as “a waste of time” because the republics would have worked out a new set of relationships among themselves and with the center.

“I expected to hear nothing new and my expectations came true,” Yeltsin told journalists. “It looks like we are returning to the diktat of the center.”

The Russian Federation has declared its willingness to sign the new treaty, but only if it provides for a greater decentralization of power than does the present draft.

But the legislatures in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as in Moldova and Georgia have voted to reject the document, and nationalist leaders in Armenia and the Ukraine have expressed serious reservations.

Gorbachev described the result of the referendum in each republic as the “final verdict” on the issue, apparently to get around nationalists who control many of the republican legislatures, but he provided no details on how the referendum would work.

“Until the new union treaty is concluded, determining the legal status of all its participants, the supreme legislative act to be enforced unconditionally remains the Soviet constitution,” Gorbachev said.

He pledged that he would use his enhanced powers as president to crack down hard on “the destructive activity of separatist and nationalist forces,” acknowledging that his failure to move against them earlier resulted in “grave consequences in a number of cases” where ethnic tensions flared into riots and civil unrest.

He also said a “counteroffensive” would be launched against crime, particularly gangs responsible for economic crimes. “Tough measures are needed and we will resort to them,” he said.

The conservative character of the speech was also clear from the promises Gorbachev made to the police and military to uphold their honor despite widespread criticism and to provide them with additional authority to maintain order.

Gorbachev was also hard on the country’s intelligentsia. Most of them were among his most ardent supporters at the outset of perestroika but some are now among his most caustic critics.

“The squandering of their energies by a significant number of intellectuals on bickering over the past and on infighting does a disservice, helping to stir destructive, destabilizing passions,” he said.

“Amid the escalating crisis, the talents and knowledge of some intellectuals have been directed not at pacifying peoples and looking for sensible approaches to worsened problems but at fanning the flames, including in interethnic relations where things have gone as far as open enmity, bloodshed and confrontation between republics.”