Soviets in Poll Oppose Private Basic Industries : Opinion: Survey also finds citizens have serious reservations about converting to a free-market economy.

Soviet citizens, while obsessed with their country’s dismal economic plight, overwhelmingly oppose private ownership of basic industries and have serious reservations about transforming their state-operated economy into a free-market system, a new poll indicates.

The poll, designed to explore the attitudes of ordinary citizens on the momentous issues facing their country, found that only a bare majority favor the kind of free-market economy demanded by the Bush Administration as a precondition for Western aid.

Moreover, even many who favor such a policy, in theory, are opposed to it in specific details: 76% of those surveyed in the Russian Federation and 86% in the Ukraine favor continuing state control of heavy industry. Substantial majorities also favor state control of banks, schools, electrical utilities, health care, the telephone system, trains, buses and radio and television.

Conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press and released on the eve of the Moscow summit, the poll suggests that President Bush is in an anomalous position. He is pressing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to do something that American politicians--including Bush--are almost never willing to do: plunge into a drastic change in basic policy when public opinion appears strongly opposed.

U.S. officials, along with most professional economists, are convinced that the Soviet economy cannot pull out of its present tailspin unless free-market policies are adopted quickly. But the apparent depth of popular resistance to such policies among the Soviet people makes it clear that Gorbachev faces enormous political problems in administering that prescription.

Only in farming do Soviet citizens appear to have a clear preference for private ownership--perhaps because it is widely understood in the Soviet Union that the private garden plots permitted by the Communist system in recent years have provided a large proportion of the country’s fresh fruits and vegetables.

Ironically, the magnitude of Gorbachev’s problem is underscored by another of the poll’s findings: By substantial margins, Soviet citizens say they favor the more democratic, multi-party political system that is emerging in their country. So, in contrast with many of his authoritarian predecessors in the Kremlin, Gorbachev must pay close attention to public opinion.

The poll results, which represent the initial phase of a massive study of Soviet and European attitudes, already have been circulated among top White House officials.

“Gorbachev has a very big job ahead of him of convincing his people that they should go to a free-market economy,” Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s press secretary, acknowledged in commenting on the findings.

“That has been the biggest problem from the beginning,” Fitzwater said. “There is no private-sector ethic in the Soviet Union. People have been taken care of under the Communist system, and they are afraid of--and opposed to taking the risk of--a private-sector market.

“The people acknowledge their system has failed and they are suffering deprivation, but they have no understanding of capitalism and, indeed, of our system of freedom, and this poll verifies that.”

Bush himself, commenting on Gorbachev’s efforts to transform the Soviet Union’s state-run economy, recently said: “When you’ve had a totally controlled economy, and you try to move to a market economy, it’s not easy. And you need help along the way.”

But the President made clear at the recent economic summit of the seven major industrial democracies that the United States will not consider direct financial aid to the Soviets until they are further along in reforming their economy. The seven nations did approve a package of technical assistance, including associate membership for the Soviet Union in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Although a highlight of the Moscow summit will be the signing of a treaty reducing the strategic nuclear arsenals of both countries, broader questions about the future of U.S.-Soviet relations and the issue of providing Western aid to prop up the collapsing Soviet economy will be major topics of discussion.

The Times Mirror poll--conducted in May and covering 2,210 people in European Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania--indicates that ingrained Communist doctrine against entrepreneurs, the pursuit of profits and allowing some to earn and accumulate more money than others pose high hurdles for Gorbachev’s economic reform program.

Deep-rooted beliefs about egalitarianism are especially prevalent in the republics of Russia and the Ukraine, the poll found, while Lithuanians are closer to Western values.

For example, 46% of Russians and 44% of Ukrainians think that people who get ahead do so at the expense of other people. But 50% of Lithuanians regard personal ambition and energy as the keys to success.

The concept of personal accountability for failure is also foreign to many Russians and Ukrainians. In the Ukraine, 48% of those surveyed blame society for personal failures; in Russia, 39% blame society. But Lithuanians, by a margin of 58% to 28%, attribute personal failure to the individual.

The poll represents the first findings of an 18-month study of public opinion in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The overall study, which will be released in the fall, will be based on interviews and briefings with European politicians, academic leaders and journalists in 1990 and 1991, on the results of 50 focus-group sessions in Europe and the Soviet Union, and 13,000 personal interviews conducted in May in nine European nations and three Soviet republics.

The initial poll results found that Russians, by 54% to 32% of those questioned, and Ukrainians, by 53% to 34%, generally approve of the idea of a free-market economy. Lithuanians approved by 76% to 11%.

Asked to choose between various socialist and capitalist alternative systems, support for capitalism was even less; 46% of Russians, for example, prefer a socialist alternative while only 40% prefer capitalism. Among Soviets favoring capitalism, only 17% of Russians, 23% of Ukrainians and 29% of Lithuanians picked an American-style free-market system.

Only 10% of Russians, 5% of Ukrainians and 16% of Lithuanians said that newspapers should be privately operated. By huge margins, citizens in all three republics said newspapers should be operated either by the state or by a mixture of state and private interests.

By contrast, state-operated farms were approved by only 6% of Russians, 5% of Ukrainians and 9% of Lithuanians.

The major hopeful sign for Gorbachev’s efforts to institute significant market reforms is the support for change by the young and better educated, according to Donald S. Kellerman, director of the Times Mirror Center.

The poll showed, he pointed out, that among Russians under 25 years of age, 70% favor a free-market economy, compared to less than 20% of those over 70. Also, 6 in 10 of those with family incomes over 700 rubles a month favor a market approach, compared to slightly less than half of those with less income. Men are also more likely than women to support economic change.

The poll in the Russian republic has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points; the margin is 3% in the Ukrainian survey.

What Ivan Thinks: a Times Mirror Poll

Here are the results of a Times Mirror poll conducted in May of some 2,210%Soviet citizens in European Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania on a wide range of issues involving the transformation of the flagging Soviet economy into a market-oriented system:

Do you approve of efforts to establish a free-market economy here?

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians Approve 54% 53% 76% Disapprove 32% 34% 11%

Do you think the country is moving too quickly to a free-market economy?

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians Too quickly 19% 25% 20% Too slowly 48% 39% 37% About right 5% 6% 21%

There are many views about the future development of society. Which of these views comes closest to your point of view?

Our society in the future:

--A socialist society along the lines we have had in the past

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians 10% 10% 3%

--A more-democratic type of socialism

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians 36% 27% 9%

--A modified form of capitalism such as found in Sweden

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians 23% 26% 38%

--A free-market form of capitalism such as found in the U.S. and Germany

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians 17% 23% 29%

--No opinion

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians 14% 14% 21%

Do you favor farmers’ being able to sell the land that they own?

Russians Ukranians Lithuanians Favor 47% 60% 66% Oppose 42% 27% 27% Don’t know 11% 13% 7%

Source: Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press