Senior Soviet Aides Reportedly Urge Major Reforms

Two Western news organizations have obtained a manifesto purportedly leaked by a Soviet official that urges widespread political and economic reforms, including freedom of speech and press, and says that the Soviet Union is in danger of becoming a second-rate power.

The document was obtained by NBC and by a London newspaper, the Guardian. An English translation was made available by NBC.

It is signed by a previously unknown group called “The Movement of Socialist Renewal” and dated, “21 November 1985, Leningrad.”

The Guardian said in its report Tuesday that the group comprises “party and government officials of senior rank, stretching up to the Central Committee.” The newspaper said the document had been circulating underground for some time, but Moscow diplomatic sources familiar with it said it was impossible to verify its authenticity.

High-Ranking Authors

From the evidence of the detailed information it contained, the newspaper said, the document appeared written “by a group of powerful figures with unusual access to Western sources and to privileged Soviet statistics.”

The Guardian’s own report raised the possibility the leak was “a deliberate provocation” by groups seeking to discredit Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform strategy by linking it to a political program that threatened the Communist Party and its monopoly of power.

NBC correspondent Steve Hurst said in a broadcast Monday night that he received the document--17 pages typed in Russian--through an intermediary who told him it came from a senior Soviet official. The official was not identified. The report is presented as a message to the people of the Soviet Union.

The document’s authors say that if the report is published in the Soviet press they would be willing to appear on Soviet television.

Lagging U.S.

The report says the Soviet Bloc is coming apart and that the Soviet Union is falling far behind the United States in military might and technology.