Soviet Union Two Hats Are Better than One

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

As Mikhail Gorbachev posed for photographs with Brazilian President-elect Fernando Collor de Mello in the Kremlin last week, a Brazilian journalist called out the question on everyone's mind. Would Gorbachev confirm the report broadcast around the globe by CNN that he was planning to quit as Communist Party chief? Gorbachev listened to the translation with a puzzled look, then smiled. "Many rumors and suppositions are circulating worldwide," he said, gesticulating with his hands for emphasis. "All this is groundless. It has come into vogue in the international press to set rumor mills working as soon as we approach a regular plenum of the party Central Committee."

True enough. But as Gorbachev prepared for this week's meeting of the 249- member Central Committee, there were signs that he had finally decided to adjust -- though not jettison -- the two hats he wears: one as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the other as President of the Supreme Soviet, the country's parliament. Closeted with his aides for several days at his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow two weeks ago, Gorbachev drafted a proposal that would reduce the party's role in government decision making and significantly enhance his powers as head of the Supreme Soviet. As a Moscow analyst explained, "The party, not Gorbachev, needs to resign from managing the economy and society."

Gorbachev has come under increasingly shrill attack from radicals and conservatives alike for letting the country drift into chaos and disorder. Store shelves are empty, crime is rising, virtual civil war has flared in the Caucasus, secessionist fever has infected the Baltics -- and as far as many Soviets are concerned, all that party members and parliamentarians have done is gather for mass talkathons. There have even been calls from both Gorbachev's foes and his supporters for an "iron hand" to take control. The conservative daily Sovetskaya Rossiya complained last week that the Kremlin's brand of reform has been "costly, contradictory, and inadequately thought out" and called for a strengthening of party rule.

That may be a lost cause. There were growing signs that a concerted attack on the conservatives was taking shape. The French daily Le Monde reported that Gorbachev aides were warning their boss that conservative forces were not just putting the brakes on reform but were trying to build their popular support from the public's discontent and anxiety. The Soviet leader, they urged, must learn the lessons of the East European revolution and come down firmly on the side of radical reform, instead of straddling the fence between liberals and conservatives. In fact, a second rumor was circulating in Moscow last week of an imminent purge of the party's ruling Politburo. The most frequently cited name was that of conservative Yegor Ligachev, who came under harsh attack in the pages of the weekly Moscow News. Deputy editor in chief Vitali Tretyakov lambasted Ligachev for supporting "the most unhealthy elements in socialism" and proposing solutions that come "not from the achievements but the mistakes of the past."

Ethics rather than ideology brought down former Leningrad party boss Yuri Solovyov, whose departure last July was personally stage-managed by Gorbachev. After losing the key Leningrad post, Solovyov was dropped from the Politburo in September, and last week found himself under threat of expulsion from the party itself for using his influence to buy a Mercedes-Benz automobile at "a practically symbolic price," according to the government newspaper Izvestia. Solovyov's expulsion from the Central Committee must be confirmed at this week's plenum as it debates the many troubling issues confronting the party.

As events in Azerbaijan have proved, the party organization in some parts of the country is near collapse. In Russia angry rank-and-file Communists have thrown out the party leadership in Volgograd and the Tyumen region of Siberia. The problem is that the Kremlin's campaign to devolve power to a new legislative system has also been running into trouble. The result: a growing power vacuum that the Kremlin fears will be filled by "extremist" elements. Gorbachev admitted three weeks ago that "we need a democratic higher authority, capable of decisively moving perestroika."

As if on cue, the outlines of a new political strategy emerged last week in the press. The Communist Party daily Pravda published a letter from a reader in Dnepropetrovsk questioning why "the central authorities sometimes display disheartening indecisiveness during such a critical situation." His conclusion: "Perhaps the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet is short of powers?" The weekly New Times contended that "events in the Caucasus have proved that the country needs a strong presidency," while the liberal Ogonyok offered the more radical view that "perhaps it was worth listening to all the proposals sounding more insistently today to institute the post of a President elected by all the population of the country."

Commentators agreed on one point: it was time for Gorbachev to stop baby- sitting with the new parliament and start governing the country as a real President. Among ideas floated as trial balloons: the President should be able to veto bills, dissolve a deadlocked parliament, dismiss the government, declare a state of emergency or even war when parliament is out of session. Not that everyone wanted an outright return to authoritarian rule. There were calls as well for parliament to be given the power to impeach a President for anticonstitutional behavior. As Boris Topornin, director of a Moscow think tank called the Institute of Government and Law, warned in a New Times article, "In the history of our country there have been more than a few examples of what the unlimited power of one man can lead to."

If Gorbachev can strengthen the presidency and simultaneously weaken the party's influence, he will have pulled off his most significant political coup to date. Far from giving up his post as party leader, Gorbachev will need that authority for the near future, until presidential powers have been legally guaranteed. And after that? There is a growing realization, even in party circles, that the "leading role" of the Communist Party, enshrined in Article 6 of the constitution, will have to go -- as long as there is a referee to ensure that the emergence of a multiparty system does not result in social anarchy. The Communist Youth League daily Komsomolskaya Pravda has a candidate in mind: "Today he is the only one who is able to become the rallying point and broker among the multitude of political and social forces in this country. After all, he is our President." Gorbachev could not have said it better.