Soviet Union Clash of the Comrades

By Frederick Painton

The signs of a struggle within the Kremlin seemed unmistakable. For more than six months, thinly veiled attacks on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies had been growing bolder. No one outside the ruling Politburo, however, could know for certain the strength of the General Secretary's opponents in what Moscow insiders called the battle for perestroika -- Gorbachev's term for the radical economic restructuring he is trying to carry out. Was Gorbachev's authority being seriously challenged? Or did the criticism exchanged in coded speeches and press articles amount to no more than a difference in emphasis between officials pursuing the same broad policy objectives? There were indications last week that the Soviet leadership had been engaged in the most significant internal political struggle since Gorbachev came to power three years ago.

The apparent loser was Yegor Ligachev, 67, the blunt second-ranking member of the Politburo. According to Western diplomats and Soviet sources in Moscow, the setback for the party's No. 2 figure came at a heated session of the Politburo last week to calm the increasingly public dispute over the limits of reform. Ligachev embodied the critical backlash against the new openness, which has brought freer discussion of abuses in Soviet society today and the brutal repression of the Stalin era. As the party's ideological watchdog, Ligachev strongly believed that this relaxation was becoming a dangerous weapon in the hands of anti-Soviet forces, as well as a destabilizing force within the country.

Gorbachev was clearly irritated when, just as he was leaving for a state visit to Yugoslavia last month, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya carried a sharp attack on glasnost. According to persistent but unconfirmed reports, he concluded that Ligachev was behind the attack and reacted by stripping him of some of his powers over the Soviet press and television. Those powers were reportedly shifted to one of the Soviet leader's strongest backers in the Politburo, Alexander Yakovlev, 64. However, the Soviet leadership showed no sign of strain at the end of last week when Ligachev appeared with Gorbachev and other Politburo members in the Kremlin Palace for the traditional ceremony marking Lenin's birth date. A smiling Ligachev took his usual seat at Gorbachev's right, and the two chatted amicably.

Despite the public show of unity, even Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze acknowledged at a press conference that Kremlin views sometimes vary widely. He then added, "There are no signs indicating that between the General Secretary and Mr. Ligachev there are any differences."

Gorbachev was moving to consolidate support before a crucial Communist Party conference that is to be held in two months. TASS reported last week that he had met party leaders from the Soviet Union's 15 republics over the previous two weeks. He was trying to sell unsettling political reforms such as fixed terms of office for party leaders and competitive elections for party posts. At the same time, Gorbachev was reportedly ready to shake up the Communist leadership at a Central Committee plenum meeting scheduled to take place before the party conference. With Ligachev weakened, Gorbachev was in a better position to place his own reformist followers in key party positions.

By moving on Ligachev, Gorbachev seemed to be strengthening his credentials as the evenhanded middleman in the argument over reform. Six months ago, he deposed the foremost proponent of a faster pace, Boris Yeltsin, one of his closest allies. After Yeltsin complained loudly at a meeting of the Central Committee that political changes were moving too sluggishly, Gorbachev had him removed from both the Politburo and his job as head of the Moscow party organization. Significantly, with glasnost under fire from conservatives, Yeltsin last week seemed to be resurfacing. In an interview in the German edition of Moscow News, a glasnost-oriented Soviet weekly, he said he regretted nothing and was still working for the party.

Gorbachev has good reason to protect his flanks as the June 28 party conference approaches. Perestroika has drawn criticism ever since he announced it in the spring of 1985. Earlier this year, overt opposition intensified as the economic reforms began to be implemented and his principle of khozraschet, or cost accounting, started affecting an estimated 60% of Soviet industry. Many government bureaucrats have seen a threat to their extra privileges -- special housing, schools and food stores. Automatic bonuses for workers were threatened, which prompted protest strikes. Nationalist outbursts in the Baltic states, protest demonstrations by Crimean Tatars in Moscow and riots in Azerbaijan appeared to encourage those who blamed glasnost for the sudden wave of unrest.

What apparently spurred Ligachev into open criticism was the unprecedented accounts in the Soviet press of the excesses of the Stalin era, which had been largely hidden from the public for decades. Although Gorbachev encouraged this examination of the past, Ligachev chastised editors for going too far with Stalin exposes, accusing them of a "disrespectful attitude toward those generations that built socialism." In a February speech to party leaders, he again complained of people who "try to present our history as a chain of mistakes and crimes and to gloss over great achievements of the past and present." Added Ligachev: "All this is being done under the banner of glasnost -- a shameful occupation."

When the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya published a letter six weeks ago defending Stalin's rule and suggesting that glasnost was leading to "ideological mishmash," suspicion immediately fell on Ligachev as the instigator, if not the author. (The letter was ostensibly written by a Leningrad chemistry teacher.)

For two weeks the provocative letter remained unanswered. Then, on April 5, Pravda blasted back in a full-page editorial that reverberated throughout the | country. The broadside denounced Sovetskaya Rossiya for printing a "manifesto for anti-perestroika forces" and accused reform opponents of "old thinking." Western diplomats and Soviet sources said the editorial bore the style and rhetoric of Politburo Member Yakovlev, who is credited with being the architect of glasnost. Recognizing that it was outgunned, Sovetskaya Rossiya reprinted the Pravda editorial in full the next day.

Whatever differences Gorbachev had with his second-in-command, this was not the kind of brutal, all-out power struggle that had rocked the Kremlin under previous leaders. Those who know Ligachev agree that he is not hungrily scheming to replace Gorbachev.

During his long career as a party functionary, Ligachev has earned a reputation as an efficient, incorruptible manager. After a four-year stint in Moscow as a deputy director of the propaganda and party organs for the Russian Republic, he spent the Brezhnev years as local party boss in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Brought back to Moscow by then Party Leader Yuri Andropov in 1983, Ligachev was named to Gorbachev's Politburo two years later. All along, Ligachev has insisted he does not oppose perestroika. In an extraordinary interview with the Paris daily Le Monde in December he said, "I know what you write about me. I beg you to understand that there is no difference between ((Gorbachev and me)); we are on the same wavelength." Observed a Western diplomat in Moscow last week: "It is quite possible to be for economic restructuring but have reservations about democratization and glasnost, especially within the party. Ligachev sees himself as guardian of the concerns of party officials."

Despite the apparent shunting aside of Ligachev, few Soviet experts believe that a fundamental or far-reaching power struggle is under way. Peter Danylow, an analyst of East-West affairs in Bonn, argues that a basic policy consensus must exist. The reason: it would otherwise be hard to imagine the Soviet leadership approving the agreement to withdraw forces from Afghanistan.

Gorbachev recognizes the difference between resistance to his policies and outright opposition. Earlier this month the Soviet leader acknowledged that perestroika "has simply frightened people; quite a few have lost their bearings." Even so, he went on, he was not about to back off: "We have every reason to say that the decisive struggle for the success of perestroika has begun." And it will go on with a team more precisely tailored to the boss's wishes.

With reporting by Ken Olsen/Moscow, with other bureaus