Constitutions Ussr

Soviet housewives, students, clerks and secretaries who lined up in unusually large numbers to buy their morning newspapers Thursday were in for a disappointment. Hoping to find the text of a draft Communist Party program detailing historic changes bound to affect their everyday lives dramatically, they instead got page after page of transcripts of party debate--but not the key document itself.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, elected as the Soviet Union's first executive president, declared Thursday that he will use his broad new constitutional powers to accelerate political and economic reforms and to save his country from the ethnic unrest threatening it with dissolution.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, elected as the Soviet Union's first executive president, declared Thursday that he will use his broad new constitutional powers to accelerate political and economic reforms and to save his country from the ethnic unrest threatening it with dissolution.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev was elected today as the Soviet Union's first executive president, a powerful post with a sweeping mandate that Gorbachev wanted to pursue broader and bolder reforms. In an overnight election, the Congress of People's Deputies voted 1,329 to 495 for Gorbachev, who was unopposed for the post.

Debate is growing in the Soviet Union over President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's proposals to strengthen the presidency, with some warning that the Kremlin may be creating legal mechanisms that eventually could turn the country into a dictatorship. Others argue that the Soviet Union is being transformed so radically and quickly that it threatens to slide into chaos unless the president is given broad new powers to control the changes.

The Soviet Communist Party, which for more than 70 years ruled the Soviet Union virtually unchallengeable, decided Wednesday to give up its monopoly on power, clearing the way for a multi-party political system here. The party's policy-making Central Committee voted, almost without dissent, to seek a constitutional amendment ending its "leading role" in the government, the economy and all public bodies and encouraging the development of a pluralist democracy.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev won a key political battle Tuesday when the Soviet Congress, on the opening day of its winter session, refused to support a call from reformists to consider whether the Communist Party should remain enshrined in the constitution as the dominant force in Soviet society.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev was elected today as the Soviet Union's first executive president, a powerful post with a sweeping mandate that Gorbachev wanted to pursue broader and bolder reforms. In an overnight election, the Congress of People's Deputies voted 1,329 to 495 for Gorbachev, who was unopposed for the post.

Debate is growing in the Soviet Union over President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's proposals to strengthen the presidency, with some warning that the Kremlin may be creating legal mechanisms that eventually could turn the country into a dictatorship. Others argue that the Soviet Union is being transformed so radically and quickly that it threatens to slide into chaos unless the president is given broad new powers to control the changes.

Soviet housewives, students, clerks and secretaries who lined up in unusually large numbers to buy their morning newspapers Thursday were in for a disappointment. Hoping to find the text of a draft Communist Party program detailing historic changes bound to affect their everyday lives dramatically, they instead got page after page of transcripts of party debate--but not the key document itself.

The Soviet Communist Party, which for more than 70 years ruled the Soviet Union virtually unchallengeable, decided Wednesday to give up its monopoly on power, clearing the way for a multi-party political system here. The party's policy-making Central Committee voted, almost without dissent, to seek a constitutional amendment ending its "leading role" in the government, the economy and all public bodies and encouraging the development of a pluralist democracy.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev won a key political battle Tuesday when the Soviet Congress, on the opening day of its winter session, refused to support a call from reformists to consider whether the Communist Party should remain enshrined in the constitution as the dominant force in Soviet society.