Party Officials in Azerbaijan Flee Angry Crowds : Soviets: The turmoil marks a turn in the drive for ethnic autonomy. So far, Communist chiefs have largely escaped the wrath of local people.

Angry crowds forced Communist Party chiefs and officials to flee the Azerbaijani city of Dzhalilabad on Friday after police shot and killed a teen-ager and wounded 150 other people at a protest rally, local journalists said Saturday.

“The power is in the hands of the people. The party, the police and local government officials have no power whatsoever,” said journalist Nazim Ragimov, speaking from Baku, capital of the republic.

Police opened fire Friday morning on thousands of demonstrators gathered in the center of Dzhalilabad to demand curbs on the power of local party officials, said Nadzhaf Nadzhafov, editor of the radical Azerbaijani Popular Front.

He said the crowd then overwhelmed the police, forcing them to drop their guns and flee. Demonstrators later attacked the Interior Ministry building.

Party and local officials also reportedly fled the city of about 20,000 people.

The official Azerbaijan Baku Radio later said the situation in Dzhalilabad was stable but tense. It said 37 people were detained and 63 members of the militia injured.

It quoted the republic’s health minister as saying 22 people were treated as a result of the disturbances and that six of them were still hospitalized.

Bakinsky Rabochy, the Communist Party daily in Baku, 150 miles east of Dzhalilabad, said the protest was “an abuse of glasnost (openness) and democracy.”

The Soviet republic, which borders on Iran, has been a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism mixed with Azerbaijani nationalism.

The official Tass news agency gave few details of the clash, saying only that “an extremist group” attacked Communist Party headquarters and the offices of the Interior Ministry. It said the situation had “stabilized” but did not mention any casualties.

The Interior Ministry is responsible for the secret police.

The news agency said a session of the Azerbaijani Supreme Soviet (Parliament) meeting in Baku was adjourned because of the disturbances.

Bakinsky Rabochy said an investigation has been launched into the incident.

The bloodshed was the latest sign of popular discontent sweeping the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in a challenge to old-style Communist rule.

Nationalist and ethnic tensions on the Soviet southern flank have already endangered President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s drive for political and economic reforms.

The turmoil in Dzhalilabad marked a turn in events in Azerbaijan, where most grass-roots activism has been aimed at neighboring rival Armenia for nearly two years in a dispute over who controls the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The unrest around the Soviet periphery--from the Baltic republics’ stubborn drive for autonomy to the explosive Transcaucasus--shows signs of sparking a backlash of Russian nationalism.

Ten hard-line nationalist groups rejected Gorbachev’s reform policies Saturday and demanded that Moscow end crippling subsidies to the outlying ethnic republics.

In a joint election platform issued ahead of next March’s poll in the Russian Federation, the biggest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, the 10 called for Russian representation in the other republics to protect the rights of ethnic Russians.

“They think concessions are being made to separatists and different kinds of left-radicals who are ready to break up the Soviet Union and sell our national treasures to Western partners,” the conservative newspaper Soviet Russia said.

The resurgence of Russian nationalism, coupled with an appeal to traditional Communist values, could prove attractive to voters frustrated by the failure of Gorbachev’s reforms to revive flagging living standards.

The key issue in Dzhalilabad was apparently the unbridled power of local party secretaries, the journalists said.

“The situation is complicated in many regions of the republic. It is reminiscent of Romania,” where a popular rebellion overthrew the bloody dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, said Nadzhafov, speaking from Baku.

The new movement in Dzhalilabad is headed by a local doctor, Mir-Ali Bakhramov, the journalists said. The protests began Thursday night, when thousands of residents poured into a city square in front of party headquarters.

Police moved in with guns drawn early Friday and opened fire, killing a 19-year-old demonstrator and wounding 150 others. The crowd then turned on them and forced them to flee.