Economists Blast Gorbachev Plan : Soviet Union: Radicals say ‘anti-crisis program’ is unrealistic. First-quarter statistics confirm the nation’s nose-dive.

The Soviet Union’s leading radical economists blasted President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s latest “anti-crisis program” on Sunday, tearing apart the new plan for halting the country’s economic nose-dive on the eve of its presentation to the national legislature.

Nikolai Petrakov, Gorbachev’s former chief economic adviser, said the program reminds him of the German statesman Otto von Bismarck’s comment in the late 19th Century: “I think the Russian empire has started to abuse its stupidity.”

Petrakov and other prominent economists insisted that the new government plan, with its emphasis on banning strikes and strict economic discipline, is unrealistic and doomed to failure; only a rapid shift to capitalism can save the economy, they argued.

The latest Soviet economic statistics, released last week, show just how desperately the economy needs saving: In the first three months of 1991, the gross national product declined at a staggering annual rate of 8% and productivity fell at an annual rate of 9%.

Strikes, particularly the eight-week-old miners’ walkout, cost the economy 1.169 million working days in the first three months of 1991, according to the Soviet State Statistics Committee. In the face of such frightening figures, Petrakov said, the government’s anti-crisis plan “offers no truly new measures.”

In fact, he said, the program is so poorly thought through and so difficult to implement that “the only mechanism the government is proposing is the mechanism of force.”

“In what form?” Petrakov asked. “It’s difficult to determine now. Maybe even by introducing martial law. I think (the program) is totally unpromising and the only way to solve problems is to use economic means.”

Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, who put together the anti-crisis program, acknowledged over the weekend that the plan has major rough spots but promised that if the Soviet people work hard, food supplies will be normalized by October and prices could even start going down.

“Unfortunately, I will have to tell you the truth,” Pavlov said on television Saturday night. “Today, the economy is sliding down with enormous speed. We can definitely see processes under way in the country that we will not be able to repair for years.”

Although he did not appeal openly to the people to tighten their belts, Pavlov told Soviet viewers that food supplies will improve “only provided that there is no chaotic movement pressing for wages. People have to understand us correctly.”

The radical, pro-market economists said Sunday that Pavlov is in an extremely poor position to ask for austerity measures because his government lacks popular support.

They asserted that for economic reform to work, the government must be revamped into a “national consensus” body, composed of leaders from various republics, parties and movements, that would have the people’s trust and greater credibility than the Gorbachev administration.

Their assessment added weight to the mounting calls for a “round-table” coalition government that would include Gorbachev, Russian Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin and others.

“Only a government trusted by the people can appeal to them and say, ‘Let us limit our appetites because we are all losing here,’ ” Petrakov said. “But of course, Pavlov’s Cabinet is not such a government.”

“We need a popular--not a populist, but a popular--government,” said Stanislav Shatalin, another former economic adviser to Gorbachev.

Both Shatalin and Petrakov spoke without any rancor against the Soviet president but clearly regretted that Gorbachev had rejected their advice and accepted that of conservative economists instead.

“He has placed his bets on Pavlov and administrative workers who went through the (Communist) party school,” Petrakov said of Gorbachev. “Those who emerged from a different environment have ended up in the shade.”

Both Petrakov and Shatalin accused current Kremlin advisers of attempting to mimic Western economists in order to persuade foreign analysts that the Soviet Union is committed to pursuing market-style reforms and is thus worthy of investment.

The Pavlov plan is expected to encounter far less vehement opposition in the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, when it is discussed this week. At committee meetings over the last several days, deputies put forward amendments and changes but, according to Soviet media, no one offered an alternative.