Gorbachev Must Go, Yeltsin Says

Exploding a political bombshell on live nationwide television, Boris N. Yeltsin issued an unprecedented call Tuesday night for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s immediate resignation, charging that Gorbachev’s reform drive has degenerated into a quest for boundless dictatorial powers.

In an announcement likely to rock this country’s political world to its core, Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, the largest and most populous Soviet republic, said that he is severing all political ties with Gorbachev and called on Russians for their support.

“I am disassociating myself from the presidential position and policy and calling for his immediate resignation and the delegation of (his) powers to a collective body, namely the Council of the Federation,” Yeltsin said, referring to the executive body to which he and the leaders of the other 14 republics belong.

As long as Gorbachev remains in office, Yeltsin charged, the Soviet people cannot hope for an easing of their nation’s economic and social woes and there is no hope that local authorities can break Moscow’s grip on their economies or politics.

Yeltsin’s harsh words were a body blow to Gorbachev’s efforts to calm this country’s growing political crisis, a fact that was not lost on the Soviet television journalist who questioned Yeltsin during the 40-minute program.

Yeltsin’s declaration, journalist Sergei L. Lomakin noted gloomily, “means that confrontation between the center and the (Russian) republic, between you and the president, will continue . . . . It does not lead to stabilization of our society but to the nation’s disintegration.”

Former Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze stunned the nation last December by warning that a dictatorship was being formed and unexpectedly tendering his resignation. Yeltsin, 60, also spoke of a dictatorship; but, unlike Shevardnadze, the barrel-chested, white-haired Siberian unequivocally blamed Gorbachev and not the Communist Party or hard-line army officers.

“I believe that my excessive trustfulness in the president was my personal error,” said Yeltsin, a former Gorbachev protege.

“Already in 1987, I was warning that Gorbachev, among other traits, had the striving for absolute personal power,” Yeltsin said, recalling the year that Gorbachev had him fired as Moscow’s party boss. “He has already done that and brought the country to a dictatorship, nicely portraying it as presidential rule.”

Although Yeltsin previously had mentioned the possibility of Gorbachev’s leaving office, he had made the resignation contingent. For example, he told ABC News’ “20/20” program last month that Gorbachev should either abandon “attempts to set up a dictatorship” or resign. On Tuesday, for the first time, Yeltsin said simply that Gorbachev must go.

After noting that he had given much thought to his words, Yeltsin said that Gorbachev’s program for perestroika (restructuring) has been transformed from an agenda for genuine economic and social reform into merely a respectable label that cloaks Gorbachev’s desire to preserve “rigidly centralized power.”

In the last six weeks, the always unstable relations between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the two most powerful politicians in the Soviet Union, have deteriorated dramatically as Gorbachev has struggled to salvage a central power structure and Yeltsin has campaigned for broader rights for Russia.

The turning point seemed to be the Jan. 13 Soviet Army attacks that killed 14 unarmed civilians in Vilnius, the Lithuanian republic’s capital, an event that Yeltsin at the time said marked “the beginning of a mighty offensive against democracy.”

In an open challenge to Gorbachev’s authority, the Russian leader then appealed to Russian troops garrisoned in the Baltic republics to reject orders to use force against civilians. He said also that Russia might have to create its own army to safeguard its sovereignty.

In response, Gorbachev, so furious that he choked on his words, took the floor in the Soviet legislature to accuse the Russian leader of suggesting a “gross violation of the U.S.S.R. constitution.” Pravda, the Communist Party daily, accused Yeltsin of “systematically and persistently drumming the idea of civil war into the minds of the people.”

Such blistering language was a far cry from the way the year began. On Jan. 9, the two men, who had failed to reach agreement the previous year on a 500-day plan favored by Yeltsin for transition to a market economy, met to discuss economic cooperation between the national government and Russia and reported some progress.

Later that month, however, Yeltsin already was saying that perestroika “has run its course.”

Gorbachev became Communist Party general secretary, or Soviet leader, in March, 1985, and, during the first two years, Yeltsin said on the TV show, he raised great hopes. “Since then, I’m sorry to say, his policy of deceiving people started,” he said.

To buttress his charge that Gorbachev is now waging an “anti-popular policy,” Yeltsin ticked off a list of recent Kremlin actions: the average 60% increase in food and consumer goods prices proposed by Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov Monday, the canceling of 50- and 100-ruble notes, making the savings of some families worthless, and army attacks on civilians.

Many officially controlled media have been waging a coordinated attack on Yeltsin since he criticized Gorbachev for his conduct in the Baltic republics. Obtaining access to air time on increasingly conservative Soviet television, he said Tuesday night, had been a “path of thorns.”

Yeltsin has accused Kremlin-controlled media of engaging in a blackout of his activities, and the initial reporting of his spectacular charges seemed to confirm his claim. Tass, the official Soviet news agency, mentioned his resignation call in a single sentence. “Vremya,” the evening TV news program, ignored it entirely.

Yeltsin, a onetime member of Gorbachev’s Politburo who has since left the Communist Party, built his political career on popular loathing for the party apparatus and his standing as one of officialdom’s victims--he was dropped from the Communist leadership after saying that change under Gorbachev was coming too slowly.

He has been trying to channel his grass-roots support into institutional clout by forging formal political and economic links between Russia and other republics as an alternative to Gorbachev’s plans for a “union treaty” preserving important powers for the central government.

“I trust in Russia and call on you, my dear compatriots, my dear Russians, to believe in us, in Russia,” Yeltsin said Tuesday night, looking straight into the camera as he asked for support. “I’ve made my choice and everyone else has to make his and find his place. I want you to hear me and understand that I have made my choice and that I won’t diverge from this path.”

BACKGROUND

Boris N. Yeltsin, 60, is a former member of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s Politburo. He was ousted from that ruling body in 1987 and has feuded with Gorbachev since then over the pace of reform in the Soviet Union. As president of Russia, the largest Soviet republic, Yeltsin enjoys immense personal popularity but has had difficulty parlaying that into the kind of political power that Gorbachev wields. Yeltsin, who became president of the Russian Federation parliament last May, has quit the Communist Party.