Soviet Union Joining Forces

"A worn-out old phonograph record" whose potential as a political leader is "not great," snapped Mikhail Gorbachev. An "indecisive . . . master of half measures," countered Boris Yeltsin. That was the kind of gibe the Soviet Union's two leading politicos had been exchanging in three years of unabated rivalry. Last week they decided to cooperate: Gorbachev and Yeltsin agreed to set up a commission to frame a relatively radical plan for introducing a market economy. Said Nikolai Petrakov, a Gorbachev adviser and member of the 13-man panel: "This is the most important information of 1990."

While details of the agreement were not revealed, it appeared that Yeltsin, who was elected chairman of the Russian republic's parliament in May, had won a round. Gorbachev reportedly accepted, in principle at least, a program for switching to a market economy within 500 days -- the kind of crash program he has resisted because he felt the country was not ready for it. The accord was worked out in the Russian parliament, not in the President's inner circle. Radicals saw the development as a sign of their strength. Said Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov, who favors rapid change: "This is the first sign of a realignment into a center-left coalition."

The reasons that Gorbachev cut a deal with Yeltsin are apparent enough. Now that a rival runs the vast Russian republic, which embraces nearly two-thirds of the Soviet Union's 289 million people, the President is no longer the undisputed ruler. Rather than challenge Yeltsin further, Gorbachev appears to be eager for compromise. "It's important for them to coordinate economic policy," explains a Western diplomat in Moscow, observing that if they cannot work out a common policy, Gorbachev is "going to get left behind."

Despite the concession to Yeltsin's demand for faster change, the committee is packed with Gorbachev supporters. Alongside Boris Fyodorov, 32, Yeltsin's finance minister, sit several of the President's closest advisers. Before Sept. 1, when Gorbachev returns from his summer vacation in the Crimea, the committee is to work out a plan for drafting a law to establish a market ecomomy.

The loser last week was Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, whose more conservative scheme for a gradual switch to a market economy -- to be achieved over a period of two years -- was rejected by parliament in June. According to rumors, Ryzhkov was so disappointed at being bypassed on the commission that he refused to sign the document that created it.