Gorbachev Puts Down Threat by Hard-Liners

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a showdown with his conservative critics in the Soviet legislature on Friday, reaffirmed his commitment to radical political and economic reforms and defeated hard-liners trying to strip him of his far-reaching powers.

Gorbachev, crushing an attempt to shift to Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov his authority to rule by decree, forced conservatives in the Supreme Soviet to withdraw resolutions critical of him, turning one of the boldest assaults yet on his policies into an abject retreat.

In a fighting speech that underscored the seriousness of the threat, Gorbachev accused the conservatives of trying to destroy the social consensus that is now emerging after months of turmoil on the need to transform the country’s socialist, centrally planned economy into one driven by market forces and private profits.

“The people understand that now is the time for concrete action, a time when delays will kill,” Gorbachev said. “Yet, we have people who do not like this. . . . At any forum, in the mass media, at plenums of the (Communist Party) Central Committee, behind the scenes, they are working to impose their opinions on us, to impose their visions, their policies.”

Angry and at times outraged, Gorbachev denounced his leading critics by name, pointing at two leaders of the conservative Soyuz group of deputies, Yuri Blokhin and Col. Viktor Alksnis. “Here you are, at it again,” he said, accusing them of having tried in April to force him out as the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

“It is you who destabilize cooperation between the Supreme Soviet, the president, the Cabinet and the republics, too,” he told the conservatives. “If you are trying to say we have no need to listen to the public, no need to take into account positions of other political forces and movements, you do not understand anything that has happened to us and to society in recent months.”

Gorbachev’s foreign and domestic policies had come under attack earlier in the week from conservative deputies, who took the president by surprise, and his plan to seek Western assistance to underwrite radical economic reforms was the major target.

“I am one of those who dislike it when the fate of my country and my people is being decided in the offices of the White House,” one deputy, Vitaly A. Semeyonov of Soyuz, told Gorbachev during the debate Friday.

But the criticism, common enough in the past, was more than talk, for the conservatives were joined this week by Pavlov and other Cabinet hard-liners, including the defense and interior ministers and the head of the KGB security and intelligence agency, who portrayed the country as beset by crisis upon crisis, largely as the result of perestroika and what they described as presidential inaction.

In a naked bid for power--Pavlov acknowledged Monday that he had not discussed his request with Gorbachev--the prime minister had asked the Supreme Soviet for the same authority to rule by decree given the president earlier.

While he justified it earlier this week in terms of action that had to be taken, he more than hinted to the conservatives that he would use it to block a radical transformation to a market economy and pursue more cautious reforms.

Liberal deputies had then accused Pavlov of mounting a virtual coup d’etat, and Gorbachev called on the prime minister to explain.

“I think it is high time that Comrade Pavlov took the floor and clarified the matter,” Gorbachev said Friday, adding that the request for additional powers “had not been properly thought through.”

When Pavlov, who had been named prime minister by Gorbachev in January, finally rose to speak, it was to say that everyone was mistaken--that he had not asked for emergency powers, that he was only talking about “a quicker way of resolving problems,” that there was “no political friction with the president,” that he and the president were in agreement on basic policy.

“I cannot add to this anything more than has been said today by Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev), who expressed the opinion of the situation that had been agreed between us,” Pavlov said. “That is all I can tell you.”

Gorbachev forced the lawmakers to withdraw resolutions that would have granted Pavlov the same sweeping powers he has--or even transferred them from the president to the prime minister.

The special powers are important, for they were intended to accelerate the pace of reform by permitting the president to transform the Soviet economic system without waiting for new legislation. Although Gorbachev has made limited use of them, they could become a vital instrument once the government decides on an economic program.

Because this authority is so sweeping, however, it could also be used to “restore order,” as the conservatives have demanded, denouncing what they see as a breakdown throughout Soviet society as a result of the broad liberalization that has come with perestroika.

Pleased with his victory, Gorbachev told journalists after the session, “I am not afraid of them, and society will rebuff those who want to aggravate the situation.”

In reaffirming his reform policies, particularly in foreign affairs, a frequent target for the conservatives, Gorbachev declared, “As long as I am the president, I shall stick to this course, which has been approved by the Congress of People’s Deputies (the national parliament, broader than the Supreme Soviet), and I shall implement it vigorously.”

If the country could not see the gains in foreign policy, the ending of the Cold War, the reversal of the arms race and the probable benefits of these gains alone for the Soviet Union, he continued, “then I would think my mission useless, and I would see no point in staying on.”

Cooperation with the West in developing an economic reconstruction program is a “normal process,” Gorbachev said, and the country should accept the anticipated Western assistance as such too.

“Let’s not suspect the leadership, let’s not think it is unpatriotic and out of touch, that it labors under the weight of its messianic ambitions or that it is ready to go begging around the world. This is pure rubbish. This demagoguery is pouring forth, and our people swallow it--yes, they swallow it.”

Viktor K. Grebenshikov, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, contributed to this story.