Ussr Economy

Conservative die-hards and reformers went to war Tuesday for the hearts and minds of the Soviet Communist Party, with Yegor K. Ligachev denouncing the Gorbachev era's "reckless radicalism" and other leaders defending policies that stripped the "evil empire" label from their nation. One day after President Mikhail S.

While admitting errors along the way, CIA Director Robert M. Gates claimed Wednesday that the CIA had warned U.S. policy-makers well in advance of the emerging economic and political crises in the Soviet Union that led to its collapse. Responding to complaints that the end of communism caught U.S. intelligence agencies by surprise, Gates maintained that in some respects the CIA was better than the Soviets themselves at Kremlin-watching. The late Yuri V.

In a frantic effort to save its collapsing economy, the Soviet Union sold two-thirds of its gold reserves in the last year, spent all of its foreign currency holdings and went deeper into debt overseas, the government's chief economist said Friday. Grigory A. Yavlinsky, deputy chairman of the provisional committee managing the Soviet economy, said the Soviet Union, one of the world's major gold producers, now holds only 240 tons in gold reserves, worth about $2.7 billion.

As recently as late January, Russia's Central Bank had only $12 million in hard currency reserves, which would have been less than enough to pay for three days' worth of imports if Western sources had not been extending billions in credit for food and other badly needed goods. That statistic and others released Friday by the International Monetary Fund have provided the West with its first hard look at the state of the economies of some of the former Soviet republics.

Shopping for groceries lately, elderly residents here say, recalls the hungry days of World War II when hundreds of thousands of Leningraders starved to death as the Nazis blockaded the city. For the first time since rationing of food was suspended in 1947, Leningraders will have to produce coupons to buy food at state-subsidized prices starting Saturday. "I believe the situation is worse now than after the war," said Dalya V. Kudryavtsyeva, 65, a retired teacher.

A panel of high-ranking Soviet economists contended Monday that the CIA has consistently overestimated the size of the Soviet economy--possibly by a factor of three--and has underestimated the proportion that Moscow devotes to military spending. Several members of the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, the Soviet Parliament, were among the group that painted a picture of the Soviet economy that was decidedly more bearish than the one that the CIA made public last week.

Reflecting impressive gains under Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet economy grew 4.2% in 1986, twice the average growth rate for the previous decade and considerably greater than the U.S. increase of 2.5% last year, the chief U.S. intelligence agencies reported Thursday.

In the late 1970s, Cooper Industries Inc. was selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment to help build Soviet gas pipelines. But now the company's Moscow representative makes the proverbial Maytag repairman look busy. "Our business, from boom to bust, has gone from $200 million to $3 million," said Richard Ciochetti, sitting at a mostly empty desk in his downtown office.

The Soviet Union said Wednesday that it will shortly devalue its currency by 90% for some transactions in a bid to curtail the widespread black market speculation in hard currencies such as the U.S. dollar. The new rate of 6.26 rubles to the dollar is a fraction of the present official rate of 0.63 rubles per dollar, reflecting the ruble's limited buying power both at home and abroad. But it still does not match the current street rate of 10, 12 or often 15 rubles to the dollar.

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin said Wednesday that he would resign if his radical economic reforms do not rescue the country from disintegration. But he added that at least half a year will be needed before people feel any improvement. "I am being asked all the time what would happen if (the government) fails," Yeltsin said in a television interview. "I believe in our success. If it fails, we will all go, including me. This is our last chance."

A woman died of a heart attack while waiting in line to buy milk in the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk, a newspaper reported Wednesday. In a bitter commentary on the death, which occurred Tuesday, a Komsomolskaya Pravda reporter wrote that "it's time to hang memorial plaques like, 'Killed in a fight for a piece of sausage' or 'Died for a liter of milk' on the walls of food stores in Chelyabinsk."

Armed opposition militiamen stormed government headquarters in the southern Soviet republic of Georgia on Sunday, sparking a fierce battle that raged for hours in the center of Tbilisi, the capital. At least 17 people were killed, according to Russian Television.

When the leaders of the Soviet Union's republics proclaimed the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States on Saturday, they were really announcing the simultaneous--and troubled--births of a dozen new countries. Stretching across the Eurasian landmass, they remain bound together by an integrated economy, by a shared history, by their need for mutual security. But politically they differ, and increasingly so, in their struggle to emerge from the collapse of Soviet socialism.

The Bush Administration's call for an international conference on aiding the Commonwealth of Independent States--the supposed centerpiece of a more dynamic American approach to the crumbling Soviet Union--has failed to catch fire and could become a minor embarrassment, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said Wednesday. Many of the allied governments that will be asked to attend have been polite but unenthusiastic. A few have been openly critical.

With protesters picketing City Hall to demand better food supplies and increasing reports of raids by hungry urbanites on farm stocks, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev appealed to leaders of four fertile republics on Friday to help feed the 9 million residents of Moscow.

The Soviet Union notified foreign banks Wednesday that it will suspend billions of dollars in loan payments starting today, a move that bankers said will badly damage what little credibility as a borrower Moscow has left. Spokesmen for the Soviet Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs said the suspension came as part of an agreement on debt relief reached last month with the Group of Seven major industrialized countries.

Soviet citizens, while obsessed with their country's dismal economic plight, overwhelmingly oppose private ownership of basic industries and have serious reservations about transforming their state-operated economy into a free-market system, a new poll indicates.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's economic reforms are encountering stiff conservative opposition, his chief economist said Wednesday, despite warnings that the Soviet Union has less than a year to pull out of the current crisis if the country is not to "topple into the abyss." Vice Prime Minister Leonid I.

U.N. Says East Bloc Marshall Plan Needed: United Nations economists forecast growing social unrest next year in the Soviet Union and the former East Bloc, with depression and unemployment pressuring governments to abandon economic reform. The U.N.'s Economic Commission for Europe argued that a Marshall Plan type of coordinated Western assistance could put the region on the road to recovery and political stability.

Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, moving to resolve a major budget crisis, agreed on Saturday to bail out Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's near-bankrupt central government--at a price.