Gorbachev Cautious in His Choice of Prime Minister

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today rejected calls to name a radical, free-market economist for the top job in his reorganized government, choosing instead a cautious veteran bureaucrat as the new prime minister.

Gorbachev nominated Finance Minister Valentin S. Pavlov as his candidate to succeed the ailing Nikolai I. Ryzhkov.

The 53-year-old economist, who has been in the finance post since 1989, will have to be confirmed by the Supreme Soviet, but Soviet analysts said his nomination by Gorbachev virtually ensures his appointment.

Pavlov will be the first Soviet prime minister in decades to be a professional economist. Ryzhkov, and most of his predecessors over the last decades, were industrial managers.

Reporting on another possible government change, the independent Soviet news agency Interfax, quoting informed officials, said that Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Alexander Bessmertnykh, could become foreign minister in place of Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who resigned last month.

Diplomats in Moscow said the appointment would be an important signal to the West that Kremlin foreign policy would not change after Shevardnadze’s resignation.

Short, rotund and easily recognized by his crew-cut, Pavlov played a key role last week in persuading the Supreme Soviet to approve a budget for 1991.

But he has been criticized by radical economists favoring quick moves to a market economy for not speaking out more vocally in support of strict financial policies.