The Soviet Parliament reconvened Monday for its fall session, facing the difficult task of implementing practical steps to move toward a market economy while dealing with staggering shortages and widespread unrest.
"In effect, the session marks the end of the preparatory stage of perestroika, which resulted in the disintegration of the old political and economic system," the official Tass news agency said.Monday's meeting of the Supreme Soviet, or Parliament, was devoted to a report by its chairman Anatoly Lukyanov and the approval of an agenda that included 31 bills.
"We have entered a stage of serious tests," Lukyanov said. "Sharp polemics are under way as to further ways of development of our state."
Preliminary debate on proposals for the move to a market economy was not expected until Tuesday, when Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov's government was to make its report on the transition to a market and urgent measures needed to stabilize the economy.
During its spring session, the Supreme Soviet rejected the government's previous proposal for "transition to a regulated market" and ordered it revised.
Ryzhkov favors a step-by-step transition to some sort of market economy.
A rival blueprint for the move to a market economy, developed by economist Stanislav Shatalin and a commission set up by President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian republic leader Boris Yeltsin, calls for much more radical reforms to quickly privatize property and decentralize control.