Justice Minister Fired in Byelorussia

The justice minister and attorney general of Soviet Byelorussia have been fired as part of a drive to improve law enforcement in the republic, the Communist Party daily Pravda said Friday.

Yevgeny A. Chkanikov, 54, justice minister since July, 1984, and Atty. Gen. Adam I. Mogolnitsky were dismissed for negligence in ensuring that law was enforced, Pravda said.

The firings were decided at a meeting of party leaders in Minsk, capital of the Soviet Union’s westernmost republic on the border with Poland, to discuss criticisms of the ministry in a recent Pravda editorial, it added.

V. Vydrin, a member of the Supreme Court of Byelorussia, one of the largest Soviet republics, had also been fired. Several other senior justice officials were given severe reprimands, Pravda said.

Twenty-three people had been dismissed from the Interior Ministry and the attorney general’s office and barred from entering courts, it added.

Separately, the daily Sovietskaya Moldavia said Vasily S. Nezhivoy had been removed from his post as an offical at the Ministry of Social Security in Moldavia for failing to wipe out mass frauds.