MOSCOW, June 23, 1988 (UPI) - The Communist Party conference that Mikhail Gorbachev convenes this week is a monument both to the sweeping changes initiated during his three years in power and the immensity of the obstacles still in the way of ultimate success.
After months of rising, then falling, expectations, one diplomat termed the Tuesday-to-Friday meeting a ''snapshot'' of the present balance of forces within the Soviet Union.
The reforms under discussion, such as curbs on the power of the party and limits to terms in office, appear revolutionary from the vantage point of the pre-Gorbachev era. But speculation about more dramatic reforms and a purge of old-line officials has faded, fueling a pessimistic tone among some of the Soviet leader's supporters.
Only two months ago, officials suggested that the conference, the first such gathering between five-year party congresses since 1941, would last up to 10 days. Now it is set for four.
Elem Klimov, reformist leader of the cinematographers union and one of 5,000 conference delegates, called recently for ''uninterrupted and unexpurgated'' television coverage of the meeting. The same week the government newspaper Izvestia announced live coverage would be limited to the opening and closing, presumably when Gorbachev is speaking.
Expectations have declined since January 1987 when Gorbachev first proposed an All-Union Party Conference, a device for speeding change that had not been used since 1941.
If the conference was to be a decisive victory over conservatives, the battle was lost during two months of skirmishing before the delegates file through the Kremlin gate into the cavernous Palace of the Congresses.
''Watch the voting for delegates,'' a Soviet official advised in April. Flipping his hand from side to side, he said, ''It is not clear who will win.''
By early June it was clear: Gorbachev's instructions that delegates should be proven supporters of the ''perestroika'' reform program had been widely ignored.
Even in the capital, where his strength should be greatest, some of his most vocal supporters methodically were excluded by local party officials.
Among those who failed to qualify were two economists, Tatyana Zaslavskaya and Gavril Popov, prominent critics of the rigid economic system that has been choking the country for decades. Mikhail Shatrov, a playwright in the forefront of the campaign launched by Gorbachev to discredit Josef Stalin and the system he created, also fell victim to the party apparatus.
Debate also has raged over the powers of the rarely used party conference. Earlier rules said it could change 20 percent of the party's Central Committee. Present rules do not say anything, leaving wide latitude for a general secretary with enough power.
Thus it had been widely assumed Gorbachev would use the conference to make major changes that otherwise would have had to wait for the regular party congress. His losses over delegates indicate he may be wiser to gather more strength first.
The result is that Soviet officials now say there will be no personnel changes.
Even though 20 percent of the approximately 300 members of the Central Committee no longer hold the jobs that entitle them to membership -- and the list gets longer with each firing of a leader in a republic or region -- they say there will be no replacements until the 28th party congress in 1991.
At the highest level, the Politburo, the only change speculated on by reformist historian Roy Medvedev is the promotion of Georgi Razumovsky from candidate to full membership. That merely reflects the power he already wields in supervising party cadres.
Gorbachev has other current problems, trouble that provides ammunition for officials who feel threatened by the relentless expansion of his reform program.
The economy, which even conservatives concede was stagnant, is proving difficult to change.
As predicted, officials in Moscow have managed to circumvent reforms intended to decentralize economic control. The result has been a half-reform and a growth rate that will fall short of that demanded by the five-year plan, the bible of Soviet administrators.
Gorbachev's effort to find help in the capitalist world also has hit a rough road. Low oil prices have cut into his ability to buy Western technology to modernize the economy. The search for foreign companies to launch joint ventures inside the Soviet Union so far has been more sound than substance.
Despite proclaiming popular support for the reforms, Gorbachev's backers concede that life for most citizens has not improved since he took office in March 1985.
Writer Daniil Granin, a reformist delegate, talked recently about ''hard times, when the whole country is standing in queues and constantly discovering that there is not enough of one thing and a deficit of something else.''
Even Soviet officials now admit the anti-alcohol campaign launched shortly after Gorbachev took office was a blunder. It not only spawned infamous three-hour lines outside vodka shops, it led to sugar rationing as moonshine production soared.
The policy of glasnost, lifting the censors' heavy hand from the state media, has been the most obvious change and the one most visible to the West. But, while winning Gorbachev solid support among intellectuals, it has created by-products that can only alarm party officials.
Corruption, disasters, declining living standards -- the revelations pour forth in the Soviet press and on television.
Armenia and Azerbaijan engage in an unprecedented public struggle for control of the region of Nagorno Karabakh, a tug-of-war that could trigger similar territorial disputes across the old Russian empire. Nationalist feelings, long denied by party officials, also are expressed openly in the Baltic republics.
Foreign policy failures, one of the last untouchable arenas, became a target in the days leading up to the conference. With the exception of a brief period in the 1920s, Soviet analysts are finding little to praise in the 71 years of party rule.
But Gorbachev shows no signs of backing off. If the party conference turns out to show his limits, it will also underline how far he has moved to open up his society.
''I don't think these basic questions have been posed in the society since the 1920s,'' said a senior Western diplomat who has spent most of his career studying the Soviet Union.
Although early reports that Gorbachev would seek mandatory retirement of party officials at 70 did not materialize, the published draft of the ''theses'' to be presented at the conference did propose the first limits on tenure of office.
Under the proposal, party and government officials would be limited to two five-year terms, followed by a third if 75 percent of the body affected approves.
Even more fundamental, the draft theses call for limiting the party's interference in the daily affairs of the local Soviets who run cities and villages across the country.
They also seek personal legal protection against such traditional abuses as tapping phones and opening mail. Even the admission of such things happening would have been unimaginable four years ago.
The conference undoubtedly will approve, with the usual unanimous show of hands, the theses as they are presented. Officials say these will be only recommendations, to be acted on by the relevant bodies.
Those directly affecting the party will have to wait until the 1991 congress, unless Gorbachev feels strong enough to call an extraordinary congress earlier.
Gorbachev is a man in a hurry, but he is also a politician who has so far avoided a fatal confrontation. One diplomat noted that Washington analysts ''say he will last another two years. But it keeps staying at two years.''
His greatest strength is the lack of an alternative. Revelations about the state of the country prove the need for reform. The battle has centered not on the need for change but its extent.
Gorbachev will use the party conference to demonstrate the distance the country has traveled in three years, and his determination to battle for more.
''Today Communists and non-party people are defending their candidates for the first time,'' said Yegor Yakovlev, the reform-minded editor of Moscow News, when protests erupted in several cities over the appointment of conservative delegates to the conference.
''And tomorrow, when it is time to elect delegates to the 28th party congress, they will know how to act better,'' said Yakovlev, acknowledging defeat for the goals he held for this conference but expressing hope for the future.
