Communist Party Puts Differences Aside, Votes to Approve Gorbachev’s Reforms : Soviet Union: Conservatives agree to withhold their dissent as crucial congress draws near.
MOSCOW — The Soviet Communist Party, putting aside its sharp differences for the moment, voted Friday to approve without dissent the proposals that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will present to a crucial party congress next week for further political and economic reforms.
The party’s policy-making Central Committee also endorsed for presentation to the congress a new party platform and plans for the party’s reorganization, both of which Gorbachev has sought to recover the lost momentum of perestroika, as his reform program is known.
The congress will open Monday, as scheduled, despite suggestions this week that it be postponed to allow Gorbachev’s supporters to recover from a harsh, all-out attack on perestroika at a party conference earlier this month.
Gorbachev, who outlined to the committee the main points of his report, stressed the need to consolidate the increasingly divided party as well as to press ahead with the reforms, a party spokesman said after the Kremlin meeting.
Describing the discussion of Gorbachev’s report as “constructive and cordial,†Alexander S. Kapto, the head of the Central Committee’s ideology department, implied that the fierce political infighting of recent weeks had been suspended so that the party could proceed with the congress and the full-fledged debate that will decide the nation’s course.
But Boris N. Yeltsin, the president of Russia, the largest Soviet republic, said Gorbachev had indeed come under strong criticism for the proposals he will make in the report.
“There were remarks about the report, and very serious ones at that,†Yeltsin, a Central Committee member, said in an interview on the main nightly news program, “Vremya.†“But our real arguments are ahead of us.â€
The committee left unresolved the highly contentious issue of the future structure of the party leadership.
Although Kapto suggested a consensus had emerged that the party leader should also be the country’s president, combining the powers in the hands of one person, he acknowledged that doubts remain about this and about Gorbachev’s proposal to transform his present post as the party’s general secretary into a new position, party chairman, and thus free himself of many small issues.
Yegor K. Ligachev, the foremost conservative within the Soviet leadership, declared in an interview published here Friday that he had “absolute confidence†in Gorbachev’s authority, notwithstanding his recent criticism of Gorbachev’s policies and his call this month for a division of the presidency and the party leadership.
The party congress must focus on the fate of the nation and the party rather than individuals, Ligachev told the newspaper Workers’ Tribune.
Fears persist among Soviet liberals that, with the strong conservative trend in many sections of the party, Gorbachev will have to battle to protect, let alone promote, his reform program.
In a sharply worded commentary, a political analyst for the official news agency Tass warned Friday that Gorbachev and his supporters must receive “the party’s mandate to deepen reforms†if the party and the country as a whole are to emerge from a deepening series of crises.
“A lapse or a deliberate rejection of perestroika would be fraught with disaster--and not for the party alone,†analyst Andrei Orlov wrote.
Although the party itself had chosen Gorbachev as its leader five years ago and then launched the reform process, it has lost much of its drive, Orlov said in an unusually critical assessment.
“There is an obvious discrepancy between the correct decisions and the open resistance to reforms on the part of some party functionaries, who are increasingly aware of the real challenge to their once-undisputed power,†Orlov said.
“This leads to a fall in the party’s prestige and disappointment of its numerous rank-and-file members,†he added. “Ever more people are leaving the party. Criticism is becoming sharper of its role as a force responsible for the economic, social, ethnic and, indeed, political crisis in society.â€
Kapto said that, after the debate on Gorbachev’s report, the 249-member committee had told the ruling Politburo to “rework it to take into account the discussion,†but this was largely to make sections of it more specific.
The biggest change, ironically, was in the name. Originally, Gorbachev’s report was entitled “The Course of Perestroika and the Party’s Tasks--Report of the Central Committee.†At the insistence of committee members, it was changed to “Political Report of the Central Committee to the 28th Party Congress and the Party’s Tasks.â€
The committee appeared to be distancing itself from Gorbachev’s proposals and sticking to a traditional formula for the general secretary’s reports to the party.
But Gorbachev was also asked to make “a political assessment†of the Russian Communist Party’s recent congress, which demonstrated the growing strength of the party’s resurgent conservative wing. That is certain to set the scene for a political donnybrook since conservatives may well hold half or even more of the seats at the congress.
The Russian party’s stand was so conservative that dozens of Communist Party organizations around Russia are refusing to become, automatically, members of the Russian Communist Party, and they are demanding that they be allowed to retain their positions in the Soviet Communist Party.
The Russian congress and, to a lesser extent, that of the Ukrainian Communist Party developed into an unprecedented onslaught against Gorbachev and perestroika earlier this month, and that prompted Gorbachev supporters to consider postponing the national party congress until the autumn, in an attempt to slow the conservatives’ momentum.
Kapto said, however, that the Central Committee had confirmed the opening of the congress on Monday and that there had been no discussion of delaying it. Originally planned for a week, the congress is now likely to run at least 10 days, Kapto added.
The congress will draw 4,683 elected delegates from around the country, plus 350 representatives of workers and farmers, who are now vastly outnumbered by party and government officials.
The committee also discussed a threat by miners at 25 mines around the country to strike on July 11, just as the congress is finishing, unless the party and Soviet authorities meet their demands for independent trade unions and the removal of the party officials who control the army, the police, the judiciary and the school system.
A look at the issues, prospects and players at the party congress. A3
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