Vadim A Medvedev

Lawmakers in the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania, rebelling further against Kremlin rule, voted Thursday to abolish the constitutional provision guaranteeing the Communist Party the leading political role there and authorized the formation of competing parties.

Twenty-one years ago, the Soviet Union sent its troops into Czechoslovakia to install an orthodox Communist leadership in place of the liberal reformers and their "Prague Spring." The gains of socialism, Moscow declared, would always be defended everywhere. When that Soviet-installed leadership was swept from office over the weekend, still clinging to communism's old and rigid doctrines, the Soviet Union reacted with quiet approval.

Four years of reforms have failed to bring the dramatic economic improvements that the Soviet Union had hoped for, a top Soviet official said Friday, and the Communist Party leadership now believes that even bolder changes are urgently needed. Vadim A. Medvedev, the party's secretary for ideology and a member of its ruling Politburo, acknowledged in a major review of the country's political and economic situation that "until now, no tangible results in meeting the everyday needs of the people have been achieved."

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, warned by conservatives that he was risking social upheaval of revolutionary proportions with plans for radical economic reforms, is slowing the pace of change but maintaining his goal of establishing a "regulated market economy," his spokesman said Monday.

This country's hard-line Stalinist government faced less pressure from the streets Saturday, but it was virtually cast adrift by Moscow in a development that Western diplomats said leaves it weakened and practically isolated from its allies. A new Soviet move insisting on a full re-evaluation of the events surrounding the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia could fatally undermine the regime of Czechoslovak leader Milos Jakes, diplomats believe.

The Soviet Communist Party, withdrawing further from direct, day-to-day management of the nation and its economy, elected a new Politburo on Saturday that excludes, for the first time, the head of the country's government as well as its key ministers. The move, which is likely to prove one of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's most important reforms, will end, symbolically and practically, the party's determined use of the state to enhance its own power as well as to implement its policies.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, rallying his supporters after a fierce conservative onslaught on his reform policies, declared Saturday that he intends to remain the leader of the Soviet Communist Party despite calls that he step aside. Although the posts of state president and party general secretary should be separated in the future, Gorbachev said, he will retain both for the present to deal with the country's multiple crises and to press ahead with further political and economic reforms.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, triumphantly winding up the Communist Party Congress, buried the Kremlin's Old Guard with a mass turnover of the party's top policy-making body Friday but failed to halt an exodus of progressives that could rob Communists of their most popular politicians.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Saturday that the Soviet Union's constitution could be revised to remove a clause proclaiming the Communist Party as the leading force in society as the country proceeds with the overall restructuring of its political system. But Gorbachev, speaking to an important, daylong meeting of the party's policy-making Central Committee, said that a campaign under way to force such a change immediately is aimed at "demoralizing Communists" and must be opposed.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev halted a hunt for scapegoats in his Kremlin leadership Saturday with a display of power and political skill, reining in belligerent conservatives who accused his top lieutenants of driving the nation to the brink of ruin.