Pravda Editor Ousted in Media Wrangle : Glasnost: Replacement follows special closed-door party meeting in which Gorbachev assailed press opponents to reforms.

The chief editor of Pravda, the nation’s most authoritative newspaper, was fired today and replaced by a confidante of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev as a week of Kremlin wrangling over the press took a dramatic new turn.

An aide said Viktor G. Afanasyev, who has headed the Communist Party newspaper since the days of Leonid I. Brezhnev, would move to the Academy of Sciences.

Sources said Afanasyev’s replacement will be Ivan T. Frolov, a philosopher and former editor of the journal Kommunist who has been an adviser to Gorbachev.

One well-placed Soviet source said the move would give Gorbachev and his reformist allies control of Pravda, whose circulation is dropping as it lags behind other newspapers championing franker coverage of national affairs.

The newspaper recently suffered an embarrassment when it published an Italian newspaper’s article claiming the popular Communist maverick Boris N. Yeltsin boozed and shopped his way through the United States during a recent speaking tour. A few days later, Pravda apologized to readers, saying the story was based on hearsay and could not be substantiated.

The replacement of Afanasyev, 66, follows a special party meeting on the press that appeared to be aimed at reformists rather than conservatives such as the editor of Pravda. Soviet journalists said that at the closed-door session Friday, Gorbachev tore into some of the stars of the glasnost- era media.

He reportedly called specifically for the resignation of the editor of the country’s most popular newspaper, the weekly Arguments and Facts, for acting against the party and seeking his political downfall. The demand triggered a move in the Supreme Soviet legislature and among the newspaper’s workers to defend the editor.

The source characterized the attack on the outspoken practitioners of glasnost as a gesture to party conservatives while his real goal was to gain control of Pravda.