Gorbachev Returns Home, Pushes Reform

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, returning home Friday from a meeting with the leaders of the world’s seven richest industrial democracies, urged his people to push ahead with planned reforms to open the Soviet economy to international cooperation and market forces.

“A new, large-scale and much-promising process has been initiated,” Gorbachev told the official Tass news agency upon his arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. “To implement the accords, we, on our part, should carry out planned reforms. This is a must.”

After meeting with Gorbachev on Wednesday, the leaders of the Group of Seven agreed to help the Soviet Union shift its economy to a free-market system but stopped short of pledging major financial aid.

In his remarks at the airport, Gorbachev appeared to be calling on Parliament to pass laws that will encourage Western participation in the Soviet economy as well as urging conservatives to give up their battle to preserve the Soviet Union’s economic isolation.

“In response to the Western countries’ movement in our direction,” Gorbachev said, “we should remove obstacles in the way of cooperation.”

Gorbachev’s meeting with the Group of Seven was greeted with warm accolades by the conservative Soviet press, but some liberal newspapers were critical of his performance.

The Communist Party newspaper Pravda praised the results of Gorbachev’s trip as “a milestone on the way toward creation of a unified world economic space” and “an example for solving global problems of our time.”

“Now an absolutely new process is to start--cooperation and synchronization of the Soviet economy with the world economic ties that put history on a new constructive path,” Pravda said. “The outlined program is based on a reasonable principle: The Soviet Union must help itself, and it has the unique resources for it. The West, with great experience in market economy, can give concrete advice, for instance, on how to use our resources in the best way. But no one else but us can do the difficult job of pulling the Soviet economy from its crisis.”

Tass, in an editorial, said the London meeting “moved the Soviet Union onto the road of integration in the world economy,” but it added that “no miracle occurred.”

The editorial expressed disappointment that the G-7 did not decide to finance the conversion of the Soviet ruble to a freely exchangeable currency or remove the limit on credits by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

A radical newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, criticized Gorbachev for failing to bring his country’s economic reforms to the point where financial aid from the West could be effective.

“The problem is not that the West does not have money available,” the paper said in a front-page editorial. “The problem is that the Soviet Union appears simply not to be ready to receive significant financial aid.

“All our preparation for the London summit resembled preparation for an exam by a lazy student who decided to read the entire textbook in the last night before the exam,” the paper said. “Practically the only thing Gorbachev could take with him to the summit was a ‘firm desire’ to move toward a market.”

The newspaper stressed that after more than six years in power, Gorbachev still has not decided on an economic reform plan.

“In the past year and a half, the Soviet Union has had nine programs of transition to a market economy, and none of those has been fulfilled,” it pointed out.