Soviet Union A Volcano of Words and Wishes

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

As the newly constituted Congress of People's Deputies swung into its second week of parliamentary pyrotechnics, a well-muscled representative from Moscow stepped onto the podium. For days, the Palace of Congresses had echoed with a litany of the sins of past regimes. But here was a man, apparently in full possession of his senses, delivering a passionate condemnation of the once unassailable KGB.

Deputy Uri Vlasov, a 1960 Olympics gold-medal weight lifter, blistered the KGB as "that most secret and conspiratorial of all state institutions." Vlasov should know: in 1953 the Committee for State Security hauled off his father, a diplomat, and the man was never seen again. Make the KGB's budget public and give the Congress the right to appoint its head, urged Vlasov. Move the agency to modest offices in Moscow's suburbs. Turn its forbidding headquarters at Dzerzhinsky Square into a library. "The bloody history of the main building is too unforgettable," he said. "This is where, for decades, orders for the destruction and persecution of millions were sent out. This service sowed grief, cries, torture on its native land."

That speech drew a standing ovation from virtually the entire assemblage. Even President Mikhail Gorbachev applauded briefly. More significantly, the new KGB boss, Vladimir Kryuchkov, told reporters after Vlasov's moving outburst that the new Soviet legislature would consider following the U.S. fashion and naming a committee to oversee intelligence operations.

As the complaints wore on, Gorbachev had reason to wonder, perhaps for the hundredth time, what he -- and glasnost -- had wrought. While his countrymen sat transfixed before their TV and radio sets, the Deputies who filled the vast hall continued to unleash frustration, criticism and not a little invective at their rulers -- even at Gorbachev himself. Some Muscovites said they found the show so riveting they had to keep their heart pills handy. Others admitted they watched and wept. One Transcaucasian Deputy aptly called the assembly a "volcano of words and wishes."

Amid all the week's eruptions, Gorbachev continued to dominate. In a 95- minute policy speech, he offered help for low-income Soviets, ordered an audit of all the benefits and privileges enjoyed by the ruling elite, and called for cuts in capital construction and the space program. He promised to reduce next year's defense budget 14% and disclosed that Moscow spent considerably more on the military than many of the Deputies suspected: about $130 billion a year, or some 9% of the Soviet Union's gross national product. Western leaders had long sought such an admission, but analysts insist that Gorbachev is still not leveling about defense layouts. Most think the military budget consumes somewhere between 12% and 16% of the country's GNP, and a few surmises go even higher. But Gorbachev's major concern remained his economic- reform program, stalled, he complained, by "inconsistency, indecision, halfheartedness, zigzagging and even backpedaling."

Adding yet more fire to the proceedings was the reappearance of Boris Yeltsin, the crusty, populist former leader of Moscow's Communist Party. Earlier, he had failed to win a seat in the new Supreme Soviet, and that, it | seemed, was the end of his thrust for position. But then Deputy Alexei Kazannick, an obscure university professor from Siberia, rose and announced that he would relinquish his place to Yeltsin. As applause rang through the hall, Gorbachev watched impassively from the raised tribunal before he told the hushed assembly, "In principle, I support such a proposal."

Yeltsin got the seat -- and lost no time in pursuing his favorite themes. Sounding very much like the leader of the opposition, he charged that Gorbachev's recent self-criticism "did not absolve him of responsibility for the failure of his reforms." Punching away at the party apparatus and its privileges, he urged that the "word nomenklatura" -- a reference to the 3 million or so holders of top jobs allocated by the party -- "be dropped from our lexicon." Yeltsin also called for election of a new Central Committee and demanded that the President submit to an annual vote of confidence, warning that if power continued to be concentrated in the hands of one man, "we may find ourselves captives of a new authoritarian regime."

From other radical speakers came a similar catalog of complaints. Journalist-Deputy Yuri Chernichenko took a daring jab at Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev, wondering why he had been placed in charge of agriculture when "he was absolutely ignorant of this sphere and had failed with ideology." Others called for a review of the events in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi last April, when soldiers and riot squads attacked demonstrators with shovels and, it is alleged, with poison gas, killing 20. The probing questions continued until the new First Vice President and nonvoting Politburo member, Anatoli Lukyanov, was moved to read out three hitherto secret telegrams sent from the Georgian party leadership, absolving the Kremlin of any direct responsibility.

All told, the lacerating rough-and-tumble debate set important precedents for a nation learning the ground rules of democracy. "The major achievement," said Estonian Deputy Siim Kallas, "has been showing the people that Deputies can pose questions to the higher authorities." More important, of course, are the answers. A Moscow woman told the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, "In other countries, if people express dissatisfaction with their government, it steps down. What about ours?" A Moscow worker offered an equally blunt assessment: "I like the way they are letting off steam, but we're not better fed because of it."