Stanislav S. Shatalin, the economics professor and Gorbachev adviser who promoted the radical free-market plan, said tonight that he was "not very" happy with the final version.

And there is little backing for the regime of Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, whose slow-moving reforms won out over the more radical measures proposed by Gorbachev advisers.

Mr. Shakhnazarov, the Gorbachev adviser, said: "I would say our political officers in the army play the same role as chaplains in the armies of other countries.

By the year 2000, according to one Gorbachev economic adviser, 20 million industrial workers will have to be retrained.

It makes such good sense that when he outlined it for some Gorbachev advisers here, they gasped and said, not really joking, "You should be our new prime minister."

Quite the contrary, Abel Aganbegyan, a Gorbachev adviser, and others believe that the worse the situation becomes, the sooner reforms could end.

And some are tempted by the Kremlin's offer of what one Gorbachev adviser this week called a "civilized divorce," a methodical secession by Moscow's rules.

"A friend of mine was just saying, it used to be that a congress was a fiesta," joked a chain-smoking Gorbachev adviser during a break in the Kremlin hall.

"This ticklish fact did not embarrass Gorbachev," Izvestia reported, quoting unidentified Gorbachev advisers.

For the Gorbachev adviser, Yevgeny M. Primakov, and the Kansans he and his delegation came to see, it was friendship at first sight.