President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's plan for switching to a free-market economy backs away from a 500-day timetable, and Boris N. Yeltsin, leader of the Russian republic, said it was doomed to fail within six months. Gorbachev's 66-page blueprint, delivered to members of the national legislature Tuesday, is at least the fourth in a confusing and complicated series of plans for salvaging the failing economy. ``Another endeavor is thus being made to perpetuate the system hated by the people,'' Yeltsin said Tuesday. ``The new program is a catastrophe which will break out within the first few months.'' ``If the ... Parliament approves today's uncompromising program, it will take less than six months to realize that the chosen road is another blunder.'' A text of Yeltsin's remarks to the Russian Federation's legislature was published today in Sovietskaya Rossiya, the Russian Communist newspaper. Gorbachev's plan would give the 15 Soviet republics sweeping new powers to run the nation's economy, free many prices from government regulation and allow private ownership of businesses. It sets no timetable for the transition, but notes other nations have accomplished similar goals in 1{ to two years. Gorbachev is to present his plan to the Supreme Soviet national legislature on Friday, and the 542 members could vote on it as early as Saturday. Parliamentary committees began studying the proposals today. Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, and the federation's other leaders have endorsed a radical plan for scrapping Communist central planning for a market-based economy in 500 days. Yeltsin said the Russian republic could go ahead with that program on Nov. 1, setting up its own currency, customs service and army. He acknowledged this would be difficult and costly, even for the biggest and wealthiest of the 15 Soviet republics, but said: ``If we show indecision in such a situation, we will lose the voters' trust and respect.'' ``If we procrastinate and put off (the reform) further, there will be nothing to reform because the economy will simply fall to pieces,'' he said. Yeltsin said Gorbachev's program, if adopted, would increase the national budget deficit to about $528 billion. ``The consumer market inevitably will be swamped by a shower of paper (money) and prices may grow dozens of times,'' he said. The plan Yeltsin has endorsed is named after its chief architect, economist Stanislav Shatalin. It differs from Gorbachev's plan in several key respects. The Shatalin plan suggests selling factories to private owners, breaking up collective farms and returning land to peasants, but the Gorbachev plan drops a clear commitment to private ownership of land. It says only that republic authorities will decide conditions for giving land to people for agriculture. The Shatalin plan would also gradually end all state control on prices. Under the Gorbachev plan, the government would still set prices in 1992 on bread, meat, dairy products and a few other staples. Yeltsin said the Gorbachev plan was an attempt ``to preserve the administrative-bureaucratic system.'' The proposal caps an intensive three-week effort by Gorbachev and top economists to resolve fundamental differences over how to change a system that fails to provide adequate food, shelter and services for the country's 285 million people. Differences among competing economic plans have touched on the very underpinnings of Soviet communism: socialist property, collective labor and state ownership of all land. ``People's lives are becoming more difficult, their interest in labor is falling, their faith in the future is crumbling,'' the Gorbachev plan says. It says the long lines in which Soviet shoppers must stand daily are a ``shame,'' and acknowledges rising food prices, overcrowded apartments and empty store shelves. But it hesitates to move ahead too quickly with reform, stating: ``The experience of applying stabilization programs in other countries ... shows that such a period can take about 1{ to two years.'' Gorbachev's compromise package, however, borrows heavily from the Shatalin plan in giving republics more economic power. Under Gorbachev's plan, republics would gain control of most of the resources on their territory. After delegating much economic power to republics, businesses and individuals, the central government would concentrate on defense, energy, highways, railroads, space exploration and communications. Gorbachev originally supported the Shatalin plan which was to have gone into effect Oct. 1, ``but the sinking union (national) government put pressure on the president, and he again changed his mind,'' Yeltsin said.
