Soviet Police-Army Patrols Held Illegal but Will Go On

The Soviet constitutional watchdog panel ruled Friday that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s order drafting soldiers for police patrols lacks legality, but it let the controversial practice continue anyway.

The Constitutional Compliance Committee, insisting that proper legal procedures be obeyed in the future, said that “precise legislative regulations” must be adopted by the Supreme Soviet, the nation’s parliament, to govern the use of Soviet troops in such circumstances.

The committee swept aside opponents’ arguments that the army may be used for police work only if civilian authorities declare a state of emergency. It ruled unanimously that the lack of statutory authority at this time was not enough to nullify Gorbachev’s Jan. 29 presidential ukase that has sent joint police and Soviet Army patrols into the streets of more than 440 cities, purportedly to fight crime.

Liberals and progressives have seen Gorbachev’s order and an earlier decision by the ministers of defense and the interior as additional signs of creeping right-wing or military tyranny.

The government of the Russian Federation, the nation’s largest republic, has called Gorbachev’s order a violation of Russia’s sovereignty and said the presence of military patrols could be justified only at times of natural disasters, accidents, epidemics or mass disturbances.

Sergei S. Alexeyev, the constitutional committee’s chairman, told a press conference that, in some respects, the increase in crime recorded by Soviet authorities could be considered no less an emergency than more dramatic happenings. The committee said it would ask the Supreme Soviet to pass the needed regulatory legislation and that troops should be deployed only with the agreement of the republics.

“Our president recently said that there should be a dictatorship of law. We join in that point of view,” Alexeyev told reporters, quoting a remark made by Gorbachev earlier in the week that had caused progressives to shudder.

In other business, the committee, which is powerless to enforce its decisions, ruled that a Feb. 17, 1967, decree of the Supreme Soviet Presidium that automatically strips Soviets immigrating to Israel of their property and citizenship violates the country’s constitution and its international human rights engagements.

However, this important ruling will have no immediate effect, because the committee said it would wait for the results of the next session of the Supreme Soviet, to begin Monday, which is expected to consider new legislation that would greatly liberalize exit and entry procedures.

To spur the fight on crime, Gorbachev met Friday with the board of the Interior Ministry, the government agency responsible for law enforcement, and “urged police to muster all their skill and knowledge to ensure tranquility in the country,” the official Tass news agency reported.