Gorbachev’s Break With Past Backed : Soviet Union: Communist Party gives preliminary approval to abandoning Marxist orthodoxy. Predicted divisions in the ranks fail to materialize.

Leaders of the Soviet Communist Party on Friday gave preliminary approval to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s radical new party program, which would break with decades of orthodox Marxism in its advocacy of private enterprise and political pluralism.

The draft program proposed by Gorbachev to overcome the “crisis of socialism” won overwhelming support, 358 to 15, from the party’s policy-making Central Committee despite predictions of sharp divisions among radicals, conservatives and centrists and even a split in the party’s top ranks.

“The plenum is taking place in an extraordinary (political) situation,” Gorbachev said in closing the two-day Kremlin meeting, according to the official news agency Tass. “But, unlike some previous meetings, this plenum is marked by a sober, businesslike approach.”

And, returning to the theme of his opening address on Thursday, Gorbachev told the party leadership, “The model (of socialism) imposed on the party and society for decades has suffered a strategic defeat. . . . We have come to face the necessity of a new and drastic change of our entire viewpoint on socialism.”

The overwhelming approval, coming after such widespread expectations of a bitter confrontation over the future of the party and of the country, was an important victory for Gorbachev, who has been seeking to build the momentum he will need to lead the Soviet Union out of its profound political and economic crisis.

“The entire analysis of the present phase proves only one thing--for the party to lose this general secretary (Gorbachev) now would be impermissible,” commented Anatoly I. Lukyanov, chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature. “It would likewise be impermissible for the president to lose this party.”

Alexander Dzasokhov, a member of the party’s Politburo, told a press conference later that the “plenum has passed the test--it solved the main problem of preserving consensus on the main issues.”

That unity may be more apparent than real, however, for conservatives seemed from their comments afterward to be intent on mounting a full-scale assault on Gorbachev and his policies at a special party congress that will convene in November or December to adopt the new program as party policy.

“This is a tactical victory for Gorbachev, but only tactical,” Alexander Buzgalin, a leading conservative member of the Central Committee, told reporters as he left the Kremlin. “This is formal unity, not real unity, with the majority conforming. If a split occurs, it will be at the congress.”

Only a full party congress, unlike a Central Committee meeting or even a special conference, would have the authority to remove Gorbachev as general secretary, and conservative party leaders have begun to mobilize across the country in recent weeks to demand such a congress in a challenge to Gorbachev and his policies.

According to well-informed conservative sources, Gorbachev’s critics had decided last weekend to endorse the program, which is still being amended at many points, only for discussion and now intend to use that debate to campaign against it--and against Gorbachev.

“A fight in the Central Committee is futile--we saw that in April,” a conservative political commentator said, referring to Gorbachev’s sound defeat of his critics at a Central Committee meeting three months ago. “We need to go to the party grass roots, and the election of delegates to the congress as well as the debate on the program will let us do that.”

Even Dzasokhov acknowledged that there had been sharp debate over the party’s acceptance of private entrepreneurship, as proposed in the draft program, and over the new character of the party as an organization competing for power in parliamentary elections rather than ruling in the name of the workers.

“If you take polarization to mean widely differing assessments,” Dzasokhov said of the two-day, closed-door debate, “this was, of course, the case, and it is a natural part of any democratic body.”

But Dzasokhov contended that the approval given the draft program by an overwhelming majority of the Central Committee indicated that the intense feuding among the party’s factions is nearing an end and that Gorbachev is assured of the party’s support.

“Several days ago, predictions of a split at the plenum had been so widespread that it was said the meeting was unprecedented since October, 1917,” Dzasokhov said, referring to the Bolshevik Revolution that brought the Communists to power. “And I am sure that there will be such forecasts for the coming congress, too.”

The meeting, coming after a breakthrough agreement with leaders of nine of the country’s republics on the constitutional basis for a federal system of government, further bolstered Gorbachev’s position after months of criticism of his leadership and his own frustration over his inability to develop much political momentum.

“Gorbachev was firmly in control of the plenum,” Nail Bikkenin, editor of the party journal Kommunist, said as he left the session. “But those problems that exist within the party were not resolved, just put off.”

The committee endorsed the draft program he had recommended, none of the 37 speakers directly attacked him and he set the timing and the overall agenda for the congress.

“It’s of unique significance that we speak about ourselves as a party of democratic reforms,” Gorbachev said in his closing comments. “It is only the plurality of opinions and the democratic comparison of views within the framework of constitutional law that will make it possible to find the truth. . . .

“We will not find an answer to our questions within the framework of the old model. Our friends whom we had helped to ‘experiment’ with this model have also failed to find the answers.

“This is indeed a crisis of socialism and the socialist idea,” he continued. “But the crisis can be overcome. It can be followed by recovery and a new, resolute step forward by the rejuvenated organism.”

But speakers who sought even more radical changes in the party program ran into fierce opposition, according to the independent news agency Interfax.

Vladilen Martynov, a leading political scientist, was shouted down, according to Interfax, when he called for bolder economic reforms and then praised the new Democratic Reform Movement founded earlier this month by Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the former foreign minister, and other prominent liberals, including several party members.

Otto Latsis, a leading economist, was met with angry criticism when he told the meeting the party should not be afraid of Western-style social democracy and reminded other Central Committee members that V. I. Lenin, the late Bolshevik leader, was “himself a social democrat.”

Responding to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s ban on Communist Party committees within state-run organizations, whether they be government offices, enterprises or institutions such as schools and hospitals, the Central Committee warned that the order threatens the emerging political consensus.

Gorbachev pledged to use “all constitutional means up to and including a presidential decree” to counter Yeltsin’s order, issued last weekend. That could mean the renewal of the political test of wills between the two leaders.

Communism: What Drove It?

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the founder of two of the most powerful mass movements in history--democratic socialism and revolutionary communism. In 1848, he and a fellow German radical, Friedrich Engels, produced a pamphlet in Brussels that came to be known as the “Communist Manifesto.” Its key tenets:

* History is a series of conflicts between classes, with the ruling class owning the means of production and the working class being exploited by the owners.

* The ruling class would be overthrown, resulting in a classless society in which the chief means of production would be publicly owned.

* The target of this revolution would be the highly industrialized countries of the West--not envisioning that Russia would be the first.

Vladimir I. (Nikolai) Lenin (born Vladimir Ulyanov, 1870-1924), was a disciple of Marx who did foresee that czarist Russia was ripe for revolt. In 1917, he led the October Revolution in which the Communists upset the czarist regime and seized power. Lenin thus set a pattern for Communist revolution around the world, using force and terror to achieve his goals. Had he lived, Lenin would have seen more than a billion people ruled by Communist dictatorships before the entire scheme began to unravel.