GORBACHEV WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE SAYS AWARD PROVES VALUE OF HIS REFORMS

----MOSCOW Mikhail S. Gorbachev, his eyes shining with pleasure, said Monday his Nobel Peace Prize reflected worldwide recognition of the importance of his reforms ''for the destiny of the entire world.''

Gorbachev's $700,000 prize came as he delayed shifting the Soviet economy from a centrally planned to a market system. While the Nobel recognition was bound to raise his international prestige, its effect was less certain in the Soviet Union, which is plagued by consumer shortages and ethnic strife.

''It will be an influence of an emotional and intellectual nature because it is ... an appreciation of the cause we are all working for. All the more so because this award coincides in time with a most crucial stage in perestroika,'' he said.

''We are on the threshold of deep changes and reforms ... with regard to the economy's transition to a market system.''

Gorbachev was expected to propose a new reform package Monday to the Supreme Soviet, but his speech was postponed until Friday.

The Soviet president said he received the news of the award from Norwegian Ambassador Dagfinn Stenseth at the Kremlin. Gorbachev said he would travel to Oslo to accept the award.

He strongly praised the other Soviet peace laureate, the late Andrei D. Sakharov, who was barred from collecting the prize in 1975, a decade before Gorbachev rose to power.

Gorbachev recalled Sakharov from internal exile 18 months into his administration.

Gorbachev said that when he took office, ''the world was ripe for change. It had grown tired of the Cold War, the arms race ... the hardships resulting from an overload of current problems facing the world community.''

''And I consider that academician Sakharov was in the first ranks of searchers for the answers that agitated people's minds,'' he said.

Sakharov's widow, Yelena Bonner, who in an interview last week with a Norwegian newspaper compared Gorbachev to Napoleon, declined to comment on the award Monday.

Gorbachev appeared delighted as he stood before reporters, speaking calmly and slowly.

''I am deeply touched. ... I perceive this action ... as a recognition of the immense value and the immense significance of the great cause of perestroika for the destiny of the entire world.''

''When we began our perestroika ... we came to the conclusion that we could not continue to live as we had lived, that we needed deep transformations in all spheres of life,'' he said.

''Even then we wanted to be understood correctly, in that what we were going to do was bound to be of great significance for all countries, for the entire world because it was happening in such a huge country as the Soviet Union, which plays a great role and bears on its shoulders a great responsibility to the world community,'' he said.

Many Soviets, even those who support reform, are skeptical of Gorbachev's ability to transform the nation.

Historian Roy A. Medvedev, a member of the Supreme Soviet, said of the Nobel prize that ''in internal affairs, it won't have much significance.''

Most of about 15 Soviets interviewed at random at Moscow said that although Gorbachev may have helped reduce world tension, his contributions to his homeland were mixed.

''In international affairs, I think he's done everything right it's domestically that there is disorder,'' said Andrei A. Tatishchev, 23.

''I would be proud of him if he put things in this country in order. What happens there, outside our borders, doesn't interest me very much as an ordinary Russian person,'' Tatishchev added.

Shortly after the announcement, Gorbachev gave an interview to Soviet and foreign television reporters. The state news agency Tass carried excerpts.

In the Supreme Soviet chamber, Chairman Anatoly Lukyanov waited 78 minutes before informing lawmakers he had ''just learned'' that Gorbachev had won the award.

The announcement was followed by seven seconds of mild applause, comparatively brief in a chamber accustomed to long speeches and adulation.

Medvedev later told reporters that Lukyanov had not wanted to interrupt discussion of a report delivered by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadaze.

A defeated Gorbachev rival, Yegor K. Ligachev, was observing the parliamentary debate when word broke. He told reporters ''I have an extremely positive reaction,'' then rushed away.