Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 14, 1990 TAG: 9007140131
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
The departure of two of the most popular opposition figures, Gavriil Popov, head of the Moscow government, and Anatoly Sobchak, the Leningrad leader, was announced as the party's national congress ended a two-week debate riddled with self-doubt and deepening skepticism about the party's value.
Above all else, President Mikhail Gorbachev pressed until the final moments for party unity, praising the delegates and declaring in an interview with CBS News, "Those who reject our socialist past I view with contempt."
"I am not veering from my course," said Gorbachev, who tightened his grip on the party at the congress. "And I have many supporters."
Popov and Sobchak, democratically elected officials who have galvanized free-market reforms in the two largest cities, declared in a joint statement that the 28th Party Congress, "in which so much hope had been placed among the party and the people, demonstrated the complete inability of the Communist Party to propose to the country a real program for the transition to a new society." They urged rededicated efforts to create grassroots political pluralism.
Their resignations came a day after that of Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic and the leading populist critic of the party.
Gorbachev said he had expected Yeltsin's resignation. "But I regret it very much," he said, contending it was "no great achievement either for him or for us."
The departure of Sobchak, Popov and Yeltsin seemed likely to accelerate the party's drop in prestige as well as the loss of rank-and-file members who have been handing in their membership cards by the tens of thousands in recent months.
Amid such anxious omens, the party congress of 4,700 delegates moved to the close of its business contending that prospects would brighten.
The Soviet leader said the congress had been far from the "funeral" critics predicted.
"It would be a very bitter thing to realize that your plans were ruined," he said. "But this did not happen."
His relative success in keeping the hard-liners from serious challenges to his authority was symbolized by the announcement from Yegor Ligachev, the senior leader of the dwindling hard-line faction in the Politburo, that he would retire to his home in Siberia and write his memoirs.
The newly elected Central Committee and Politburo reflected Gorbachev's hold over the uncertain and increasingly impotent party.
But insurgent leaders said the congress had opted for mere intramural cosmetics, and remained a hindrance to true democratization.
by CNB