Another Old Guard Official Ousted in Gorbachev Purge of Politburo

Victor V. Grishin, the former Moscow Communist Party boss who spent 25 years in the top echelons of power, was ousted Tuesday as a member of the ruling Politburo.

The removal symbolized Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s drive to purge the party of Old Guard officials accused of corruption and cronyism.

The man who replaced Grishin in the key Moscow post last year, Boris N. Yeltsin, 55, was elevated Tuesday to non-voting membership in the Politburo by an assembly, or plenum, of the Communist Party Central Committee.

Joined Under Khrushchev

The action came a week before the opening of the 27th party congress, where Gorbachev is expected to win approval for sweeping changes in the party and government hierarchies.

Grishin, 71, was the longest-serving member of the Politburo, which he joined in 1961 under the late Nikita S. Khrushchev as a non-voting member. He was elevated to full membership in 1971, when Leonid I. Brezhnev was the party leader.

Western diplomats believe that Grishin tried to block Gorbachev’s accession to the top post after the death of Konstantin U. Chernenko last March. Not long afterward, Soviet newspapers began a series of highly critical articles about the Moscow party apparatus, apparently aimed at Grishin and his key subordinates.

They were accused of allowing construction of shoddy apartments, falsifying reports on building activity and accepting bribes for living quarters.

Grishin was dismissed as Moscow party leader last Dec. 24. At the same time, the mayor of Moscow, Vladimir F. Promyslov, was also removed from office. Yeltsin, a veteran party leader in the Ural city of Sverdlovsk and a model of the middle-aged managers favored by Gorbachev, took over.

Less than a month ago, as a member of the Politburo, Grishin attended a Moscow party meeting and sat through a scathing attack on his leadership delivered by his successor. This gave rise to a joke about the Muscovite who is asked how to tell Gorbachev’s shoe size, and replies, “Look at Grishin’s backside.”

At the Moscow meeting, Yeltsin made no direct reference to Grishin by name but attacked his leadership in strong terms. “The whole country,” he said, “noticed that bureaucracy had blossomed in the capital, with discipline spiraling down.”

Discipline Plummeting

Yeltsin said the party organization was “losing contact with the masses, a terminal disease for any party body,” and he said the people of Moscow had a right to be outraged about shortcomings in public transportation, medical care and housing as well as widespread corruption in stores and services.

As a Moscow office worker put it, “Grishin made a mess of Moscow the same way Brezhnev made a mess of the country, through sloth, cronyism and selfishness.”

Indirectly, Gorbachev has criticized the Brezhnev era, and Grishin, one of the leading members of the Old Guard, symbolized that legacy.

In another action, the Central Committee approved the retirement of Konstantin V. Rusakov, 77, veteran chief of the party’s relations with East European Communist parties. No successor was named.