Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 9, 1990 TAG: 9007090200
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
The Soviet leader's remarks Sunday came during a daylong recess in the crucial party congress, which was to reconvene today to adopt a new platform.
The increasingly unpopular Communists are battling to salvage credibility. The people blame the Communists for the economic crisis and the decades of institutional corruption, and the party's candidates have suffered defeat after defeat at the polls.
Nominations for party general secretary were scheduled for today and voting for the post on Tuesday.
Although Gorbachev has drawn criticism from hard-liners and reformers alike at the congress, he is not expected to face a major challenge in his bid to win re-election as head of the 19-million-member party.
There is a sense that the Communists need Gorbachev to survive as a united force as their long-dominant role in Soviet politics is increasingly threatened.
Outside the congress, another perhaps more serious challenge looms ahead for Gorbachev.
Coal miners announced plans Sunday to stage a one-day nationwide strike Wednesday to warn party leaders they can no longer take for granted the support of the working class they claim to represent.
At Sunday's four-hour meeting between Gorbachev and the non-voting observers, the atmosphere was "tense" and the Soviet president heard complaints about everything from his government's ethnic policy to the lack of consumer goods.
"They criticize me personally or the Politburo, [and debate whether] to remove us or not," Gorbachev, who has been party general secretary since 1985, reportedly said.
"I will listen to it all but you will decide everything. Am I needed by you? You will decide," Gorbachev told the gathering. Soviet media carried no details of the meeting, which was closed to foreign reporters.
Gorbachev told participants that the choice for party leader is in the hands of the congress: "I maintain only one thing: The policy that I have chosen I will pursue, and for me the biggest prize is that my homeland will live."
His remarks were conveyed by Nina Zhukova, a weaver from the Russian city of Ivanovo. Her account was confirmed by other participants.
Vladimir Fomin, an aviation plant worker from Smolensk, said Gorbachev and Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, also at the meeting, were criticized for raising prices as they attempt to do away with the crippled centrally planned economy and convert to a market-based system.
Fomin said the ethnic issue also came up, with an Azerbaijani woman charging that Gorbachev had done nothing to prevent bloodshed in her republic's dispute with neighboring Armenia.
In a Soviet TV interview late Sunday, Gorbachev and Ryzhkov both appealed to coal miners not to stage their planned one-day walkout. Gorbachev pleaded with the miners not to take what he called "an illegal path."
"Everybody should understand that this is not the time for ultimatums," he said.
Ryzhkov said the government was giving mine regions 30 percent more resources this year than last and will announce new plans this week to help the miners.
But anger and defiance appeared to be growing among miners, who say the government has failed to keep the promises it made last summer to end a crippling strike.
Their miners' leaders rejected an appeal made last week by delegates to the party congress to abandon the strike. Their long list of economic demands is quickly becoming secondary to their plan to found a union in mid-August.
by CNB