Soviet Union Face-Off on Reform

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At a time when his popularity has climbed to new heights abroad, Gorbachev must fend off growing attacks at home from two fronts: what he calls the "adventurists" and the "reactionaries." Last week the Soviet leader took on the adventurist radicals, criticizing them for racing "like firemen, with clanging bells" to abolish the constitutional guarantee of Communist Party rule. The Congress decided not to take up the contentious question of Article 6, voting 1,138 to 839, with 56 abstentions. But the margin of victory was not so comfortable that the Kremlin could indefinitely ignore the East European-like rush to multiparty politics. Boris Yeltsin, the ex-Politburo member turned radical populist, urged the leadership to learn the lessons of East Germany, where reforms were delayed so long that they were eventually accomplished within a week -- "without ((Erich)) Honecker."

For all the bluster on the left, Gorbachev's greatest challenge comes from the reactionary conservatives. They make up a bizarre patchwork quilt: hard- line trade unionists and factory workers from groups like the United Worker's Front who oppose a "return to capitalism"; military officials angered by plans to convert defense factories to civilian use; entrenched party apparatchiks who fear the loss of position and privileges; and Russian nationalists who hanker after the Czarist past, many of them aligned with the reactionary Pamyat (Memory) movement. Whatever their ideological differences, the conservatives are united by a concern that the reforms are moving too fast and bringing in alien Western ideas that are pushing the country toward a social breakdown.

Party conservatives who long masqueraded as yea-sayers to Gorbachev have begun to regroup. Leningrad party boss Boris Gidaspov was roundly criticized from the floor of the Congress last week for making "threats against our leader" and "sounding nostalgic notes" for the past. Surprised by the attack, Gidaspov claimed that everything going on in Leningrad was aimed at "speeding up perestroika." Gorbachev watched the whole spectacle impassively from the tribunal.

The Soviet party leader has had his share of bruises lately. He was apparently so angered by the harsh criticisms he heard at the Central Committee plenum two weeks ago that he threatened to resign. Gorbachev has played this trump card on at least two other occasions to rally support. But this time the conservative onslaught was especially fierce, particularly from Alexander Melnikov, party boss from the Siberian city of Kemerovo, one of the sites of coal-mining strikes that swept the nation last July. In an article in the liberal weekly Moscow News, journalist Danil Granin, who was a guest at the plenum, expressed alarm that "here for the first time, not at a factory meeting but from the mouths of leaders of major party committees, I heard direct accusations against Gorbachev." Granin even heard complaints that "if the capitalists and the Pope are praising us, we are taking the wrong road."