Gorbachev Ready to Counterattack Critics, Aides Say : Soviet Union: He expects a showdown today with party conservatives who are trying to oust him.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, challenged by Communist Party conservatives over the Soviet Union’s worsening political and economic crisis, plans to denounce his critics as “revenge-seeking saboteurs” today in a showdown before the party’s policy-making Central Committee, according to presidential aides.

In a “them-or-me” counterattack, Gorbachev is expected to accuse the conservatives of wanting to end all his reforms, including democratization, and to return the Soviet Union to the “era of stagnation.” The conservatives are pushing for his replacement as the party’s general secretary and then as the country’s president.

“President Gorbachev is facing a challenge to his leadership,” Vitaly N. Ignatenko, the Soviet leader’s press secretary, acknowledged Tuesday. “The party apparat wants to take revenge for perestroika (restructuring) and for the revolution that began with it in 1985.

“This is all making itself felt in many ways today, and President Gorbachev is not in an easy position. The opposition has calculated its moves very precisely, criticizing the general secretary in tune with the widespread discontent over the economic situation in the country. This is their trump card.”

Gorbachev expects “a very serious, constructive and honest discussion with the party, one in which some rather sharp and unpleasant issues will be raised and in which the president’s leadership will be criticized,” Ignatenko said of the crucial two-day meeting.

“But the president will try to reassert, even more forcefully than he has, his own firm belief that he is right and that his way holds real promise for the country.”

Other presidential aides said that, depending on the broader sentiments at the Kremlin meeting today, Gorbachev is prepared to respond “in kind” to the conservatives’ charges, even at the cost of splitting the party by forcing out conservatives.

“The evidence is in hand of the calculated sabotage carried out by many members of the party apparat, who failed to obey directives, who undercut policies, who said one thing but did another,” one Kremlin aide said. “They should know that, as Communists, they could face party tribunals.”

Anatoly Karpychev, a leading political commentator for the party newspaper Pravda, wrote Tuesday that “the party apparat is craving revenge . . . for the defeats in the first perestroika years.”

He said: “Just like the (radical) democrats, the party apparat has been playing on the economic difficulties. Communists have volunteered to help the political opposition topple Gorbachev. Although the whole party is certainly not engaged in this, a split is evident.”

Gorbachev sought in talks Tuesday to secure the support of key regional leaders--including populist Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin--for a new Union Treaty to lay the foundation for a decentralized federal political structure and a mixed economy.

Only nine of the 15 constituent republics participated, Ignatenko said. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the southern republics of Armenia and Georgia, and Moldova on Romania’s border have either declared their independence or are moving to secede.

The support of the nine republics was far from assured, according to the independent news agency Interfax, since several leaders criticized the government’s latest “anti-crisis” economic program as poorly thought out, harsh where it should be accommodating and soft where it should be tougher.

Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov nonetheless cajoled lawmakers into giving preliminary approval to the measures, which would authorize his government to impose stringent discipline on the Soviet Union’s disintegrating economy.

“Give us the right--we’ll bring order,” Pavlov told the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, in a tone that was half-jocular and half-ominous. “Give it to us, we’ll take it, and we’ll know what to do with it. Give it to us.”

By approving in principle the Pavlov program on a vote of 323 to 13, the Supreme Soviet essentially gave its permission for the government to crack down on strikers in key industries and on factory managers who refuse to abide by financial rules.

Lawmakers are expected to discuss possible amendments to the program during committee sessions today and Thursday before giving final approval Friday. Gorbachev is expected to address the Supreme Soviet on Friday about the country’s economic crisis.

Pavlov’s program also pushes radical economic reform with the state’s selloff of up to two-thirds of all small businesses to private owners by the end of next year.

The first priority, Pavlov made clear, will be order. “It may not be very sophisticated order,” he told the lawmakers, who grew increasingly agitated and disruptive as his calls to whip the country into shape became more candid, “but it will be order. That’s all we ask.”

Meanwhile, in the western republic of Byelorussia, an estimated 300,000 workers went on strike, demanding an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

They called for an immediate, emergency session of the republic’s legislature, and when its leaders refused to convene before late May, the strikers said they would continue their protest today.

More than 40,000 people, mostly factory workers, streamed into Lenin Square in Minsk, the republic’s capital, news agencies said.

Two weeks ago, a two-day strike in Minsk ended when the government agreed to negotiate with leaders of the workers’ movement.

“We’re striking again because the government did not fulfill our main political demand,” said Roman Yakovlevsky, a strike committee spokesman. “We wanted the legislature to convene in an emergency session to discuss a new election law.”

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren also contributed to this article.