Gorbachev Elevates Russian in Surprise

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today named a surprise choice for the new post of vice president--a career Communist official who climbed through the party apparatus to join the Politburo.

Gennady Yanayev, 53, an ethnic Russian who previously headed the Young Communist League and the official trade union, was criticized by some deputies as an old-style conservative who would slow reform.

But Gorbachev defended his candidate as “an active defender of and participant in perestroika ,” and Yanayev said he supports Gorbachev’s reforms although he called for caution in the move toward a market economy.

The nomination of a Russian as vice president was a surprise partly because of the widespread belief that Gorbachev would choose an official from one of the other 14 republics to offset charges the central government was unsympathetic to ethnic minorities.

Gorbachev said last week he was ready to nominate Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze for vice president, but Shevardnadze then resigned and subsequently refused the post.

No other names were placed in nomination today. Voting was to be by secret ballot tonight with results to be announced Thursday. More than half the voting deputies would have to cast ballots against Yanayev to force another nomination.

Several deputies objected to the fact that there were no alternative candidates, but others said Gorbachev should have the right to choose his own Cabinet and vice president.

Yanayev, a historian by profession, is a longtime Communist Party official who earlier this year was made a full member of the party’s ruling Politburo. He was formerly head of the party’s youth organization, the Komsomol, and briefly served as head of the official trade union organization.

“It is a bad time for the republics,” said Algimantas Chekuolis, a Lithuanian deputy and newspaper editor who was observing but not participating in the Congress. “We got another Gorbachev, a complete apparachik a la Gorbachev.”