REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : 2 Key Soviet Figures to Retire to Their Dachas Instead of Siberia Exile

MOSCOW —  With hard-liner Yegor K. Ligachev and ideology chief Vadim A. Medvedev out of the running for the Communist Party Politburo’s new lineup, talk at the party congress turned Friday to whether the two, once among the nation’s most powerful men, would now be compiling their scrapbooks and growing roses.

Ligachev, as chipper as ever amid a mass of reporters, said he plans to go home to Siberia and write a book.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m going back to my native district, to Novosibirsk, to Tomsk, to my village.”

Medvedev, who is politically almost as far to the left as Ligachev is to the right, found himself repeatedly drowned out by contemptuous applause when he spoke from the podium. He also tried to put a good face on his abrupt retirement.

“Well, I have science, I have economics, science . . . I have things to do,” the white-haired former teacher said. “With a pen in my hands, I never had a problem with not having enough ideas.”

But delegates had little sympathy for the outgoing leaders.

Ligachev “should have had the grace to just say ‘Thank you’ and retire with honor” instead of running this week for the post of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s party deputy, writer David Kugultinov said. Now, he said, shrugging: “He’ll live. He’ll have a nice pension, he’ll have a good dacha. “

Implicit in the party veteran’s remarks were the infinitely more pleasant prospects that retirees now face compared to past decades: Defeat at such party forums led to imprisonment or death for many early Bolsheviks.

Deputy Prime Minister Leonid I. Abalkin, the economist who has helped draft the Kremlin’s reforms, could not disguise his disgust at the Congress’ emotional tone and habit of ridiculing unpopular speakers with mock applause.

“Sometimes, the congress hall reminded me of the stands at the World Cup soccer games, except they didn’t wave a flag, but they shouted just the same, and just about got to the point of whistling,” Abalkin complained.

At long last, even the Palace of Congresses’ buffet, that exclusive Kremlin hall of white-draped tables laden with absurdly cheap delicacies for the elite, has begun to show signs of reform.

This year, delegates got no caviar, the most coveted Russian luxury food, neither black nor the less-prestigious red, although they could still buy open-faced sandwiches of tender sturgeon for about 40 cents each.

Some of the scores of blue-suited waiters said they saw a difference in the tone of table talk as well, with far more heated discussions than at previous party congresses.

One buffet worker said he saw definite differences between members of the parliamentary Congress of People’s Deputies, who also use the building for their sessions, and the current party delegates. When hot dogs are served, he said, the earthier government deputies use their fingers and pop them into their mouths, while the party delegates never fail to use a knife and fork.

Worsening shortages were reflected as well, with each delegate leaving the buffet Friday cradling seven packs of cigarettes and boxes of imported Egyptian chicken bouillon.

The Soviet economy is in such frightful shape that Gorbachev advisers are now counting on forces mightier than either the Communist Party or the Western capitalist nations to which Moscow has appealed for help.

Stanislav Shatalin, a member of the Presidential Council, the country’s top policy-making body, was asked Friday why he thought the government’s economic reforms would be able to move ahead in the wake of the Communist Party Congress. His reply, delivered with only a hint of a smile: “I trust in God.”

Just as some in America criticize “The Star-Spangled Banner,” some delegates at the congress had some pangs about the militaristic tint of their party’s anthem, not to mention those uncomfortable high notes.

One delegate took the podium Friday and demanded, “Comrades, what are we singing?”

Russian lyrics to the anthem, the Internationale, are indeed feisty, if not downright apocalyptic. The first verse, in loose translation, includes the line, “our outraged mind is boiling and prepared to lead into a fatal battle,” and part of the chorus echoes, “this is our final, decisive battle.”

The congress decided to refer the proposal for a new anthem to the Central Committee, which is usually entrusted with weightier issues such as economic reform. Nevertheless, the congress, led by Gorbachev, ended its 12-day session with a rousing rendition of the socialist battle hymn.

In the midst of the congress’ thousands of gray-suited, middle-aged men, with their hair combed straight back in classic party functionary style, Sultan Abubakarov wore army boots, a belted army uniform from the time of the Soviet civil war and a fez-shaped hat of Persian lamb that he won’t take off even for Gorbachev.

“This is the crown of my people,” said Abubakarov, a member of the small Chechen-Ingush nation in the north of the Caucasus Mountains region. “If I remove it, my people will be humiliated, degraded.”

A fellow delegate, Saidazhmed Lorsanukayev, said that Chechen-Ingush men take their hats so seriously that a delegate to a party congress under Josef Stalin even dared to refuse the brutal dictator’s request that he bare his head.

“Chechen-Ingush bow only before three things: the Earth, a spring of water, and their mothers,” Lorsanukayev said.

Perestroika, the Kremlin’s program of reforms, is so amorphous that it doesn’t lend itself to easy personification, but it appears that for Anatoly I. Lukyanov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, or legislature, who fulfills many of the functions of a vice president, it has a feminine cast. Asked which delegates he backed for the Politburo, he said, “I support a certain lady whose name is perestroika. “