Gorbachev Ousts, Demotes Rivals in Major Shake-Up

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev dramatically reshaped the Kremlin’s political hierarchy on Friday, moving key supporters into the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo and retiring four of its longtime members, including Andrei A. Gromyko, who for decades represented the grim face of Soviet diplomacy.

Summoning the party’s policy-making Central Committee to an urgent meeting, Gorbachev succeeded in shifting the balance within the Politburo decisively in his favor, winning one of his toughest political battles since becoming the party’s general secretary 3 1/2 years ago.

In perhaps the most significant move, Yegor K. Ligachev, the principal conservative voice within the Politburo and Gorbachev’s main political rival, lost his jobs as the party’s chief ideologist and the head of the Central Committee secretariat.

Agriculture Post

Ligachev, who has been considered the party’s No. 2 official, retained his membership in the Politburo but was placed in charge of agriculture, a crucially important but thankless job.

Other moves endorsed in the one-hour meeting included the transfer of Viktor M. Chebrikov, head of the KGB, the Soviet security police, to a new post in the Central Committee; the retirement of three Politburo members identified with the late Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, and the surprise departure of Anatoly F. Dobrynin, 68, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States who returned to Moscow in 1986 to serve as the Central Committee secretary for international relations.

Gorbachev’s intention in strengthening his control of the party apparatus through the broadest shake-up of the Kremlin hierarchy since he took over the leadership in March, 1985, seemed to be the reinvigoration of his program of political, economic and social reforms known as perestroika, which has lost much of its original impetus.

Assessment of Reforms

Speaking to the Central Committee during its meeting in the Kremlin on Friday, Gorbachev said an assessment of the reforms at this point had shown both the need to reorganize the party structure and to carry out a number of personnel changes within the hierarchy.

As part of the major reorganization and streamlining of the party, he won approval from the 300-member Central Committee to establish six party commissions, most to be headed by backers of his reform policies.

The party’s headquarters staff will also be reduced by as much as half in a move stripping the old, conservative bureaucracy of much of its power.

The retirement of Gromyko, 79, from the Politburo cleared the way for the election of Gorbachev to succeed him as president--a post the longtime former foreign minister has held since 1985. The Supreme Soviet, the nation’s Parliament, is expected to vote today.

Gorbachev also is expected to address a special session of the Supreme Soviet in an appeal to the nation for support in overcoming conservative opposition and putting perestroika into effect.

Ligachev’s Opposition

Ligachev has opposed many key concepts of Gorbachev’s reforms--inclusion of market forces in the centrally planned Soviet economy, a diminished role for the party in day-to-day management of the economy and government and de-emphasis of the “class” aspects of Soviet foreign policy.

This has brought him into conflict with liberals in the Politburo, threatening to split the Soviet leadership at an important juncture in the country’s history.

Ligachev’s outspoken criticism has, moreover, encouraged other conservatives, some of whose considerations have been more personal than political, to oppose the reforms, creating within the party a growing “Ligachev faction.”

But Gorbachev had returned two weeks ago from a trip to eastern Siberia, where he was repeatedly heckled by residents, all disappointed supporters of perestroika, who had demanded to know when they would benefit from the reforms.

“The visit had a major impact on Mikhail Sergeyevich,” one Central Committee staff member said of Gorbachev. “He came back impatient for change, determined to push everything as hard and as fast as possible. . . .

Change ‘Had Been in the Cards’

“The Politburo changes had been in the cards for some time, but he brought everything forward. He wanted to get moving now and to tell people that we are moving.”

Vadim A. Medvedev, 59, a party secretary who was elected to full membership in the Politburo on Friday and who now heads the party’s new ideology commission, told a news conference after the brief Central Committee meeting that the changes were a clear gain for Gorbachev in his efforts to accelerate and broaden the reforms.

“What do you think?” Medvedev replied when asked whether Gorbachev had won or lost in the intense political infighting most observers believe had preceded the meeting.

“I think that the course of perestroika is advancing steadily,” he continued. “It’s my belief that this is a major step toward achieving the goals of the party conference” held last June.

Medvedev emphasized that the changes were approved unanimously and without debate. Only Gorbachev and Gromyko spoke at the meeting, he added.

No Political Crisis

He repeatedly rejected suggestions that Gorbachev and his reform program are being seriously challenged or that the country is in the midst of a political crisis.

“Conjectures and allegations have been made that there is a crisis in the Soviet leadership and that contradictions have arisen among its members,” he said when asked about reported differences between Gorbachev and Ligachev, who apparently returned to Moscow from a vacation in the past few days.

“Things have gone so far that sympathy--condolences, even--have begun to be expressed for Comrade Gorbachev and the perestroika policy.”

At the United Nations, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov called the Moscow shake-up a “change of generations. The generation which is coming to power waited in the wings, perhaps too long.”

When asked if Gromyko and Dobrynin were dismissed, Gerasimov replied, “It’s not dismissal--these people are retiring.”

Gerasimov, predicting further personnel changes, said those announced Friday “are going to reinforce the hand of perestroika .” He added: “ Perestroika is a continuing process.”

Although Gromyko’s resignation from active public life had been anticipated, his departure from the Soviet, and international, political scene was a milestone for Moscow.

“I am saddened by the fact that my position with the party’s Central Committee has changed,” Gromyko said after his resignation had been accepted and Gorbachev had paid tribute to his long years of service, which included 28 years as foreign minister. “But age is a stubborn thing, and there is no getting away from it.”

His support of perestroika should not be doubted, Gromyko declared, although he has often been characterized as one of the “older riders.” The present political course, calling for “a revolutionary restructuring of the whole life of the country, is the only correct and scientifically substantiated one,” he said, declaring his “resolute support” of Gorbachev’s policies.

“I express a profound satisfaction with the fact that in our leading collective--the Central Committee and the Politburo of the party--there exists an ideological and political unity,” he added.

Both Soviet and foreign analysts saw the complex series of personnel shifts as completing the leadership changes begun in April, 1985, when Gorbachev convened the first Central Committee meeting under his leadership.

With the exception of Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky, 70, who is now the senior member of the Politburo, and of Gorbachev himself, every other full or non-voting member has been elected to the Politburo within the last five years--and most were chosen by Gorbachev himself.

With these latest changes, the Politburo has 12 full and eight non-voting members, and Gorbachev is thought to have a majority on virtually any issue.

The importance of the latest personnel shifts will be seen, according to Soviet and foreign analysts, when the leadership again debates steps to enlarge and move Gorbachev’s reforms forward.

Attempts to lay out a new Soviet strategy for economic development, for example, have been severely hampered by political restrictions placed on economists here in the belief that these upheld party orthodoxy.

Challenge to Opposition

With his supporters now in most key policy posts, Gorbachev may be able to counter the growing opposition to perestroika from government and party officials, from vested economic and social interests and from ordinary but skeptical citizens.

The changes brought the retirement of the last Politburo members elected during the long tenure of Brezhnev, whose 18 years in power are now criticized as the “period of stagnation.”

The others to go, in addition to Gromyko, were Mikhail S. Solomontsev, 74, chairman of the party’s watchdog control commission, and two non-voting Politburo members, Pyotr N. Demichev, 70, Gromyko’s deputy as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and a hard-line former minister of culture, and Vladimir I. Dolgikh, 63, who has supervised the troubled energy and natural resource sectors of the economy in recent years. The head of another party supervisory commission also retired.

Those promoted to non-voting “candidate” membership in the Politburo included Anatoly I. Lukyanov, 58, who serves as Gorbachev’s principal assistant; Alexandra P. Biryukova, 59, the first woman in the Politburo in two decades, and Col. Gen. Alexander V. Vlasov, 56, the minister of internal affairs.

Heading the new party commissions will be Georgy P. Razumovsky, party affairs and personnel; Medvedev, ideology; Nikolai N. Slyunkov, economic and social questions; Ligachev, agriculture; Alexander N. Yakovlev, international affairs, and Chebrikov, legal affairs.