Reality for a Communist Boss: Party-Time May Be Over : Reform: She holds a key post at perfume factory. Going back to her old job would mean a pay cut.

Ludmilla Logunova forces a reconsideration of all those stereotyped images of the “Communist Party boss.”

Party bosses are supposed to be burly, loud, balding, maybe a touch sinister. They’re supposed to ride around in big black cars and inspire ordinary mortals to tremble in their presence.

The only one likely to tremble in the presence of Logunova is the 31-year-old “party boss” of the New Dawn Perfume Factory herself.

For every stereotypical party boss in this country, some of whom really do effectively rule over territories larger than most Western European countries, there are literally hundreds of thousands of lower-level party apparatchiks like Ludmilla Logunova.

And when the party leadership voted here last week to surrender its constitutionally guaranteed “leading role” in society, these full-time party workers felt the ground move beneath them.

Logunova heads one of 440,000 so-called “primary party organizations” that exist in virtually every Soviet factory, farm, school and military unit. Smaller ones, like hers, have only one full-time party worker; the biggest factory committees may have dozens of officials who receive premium salaries solely for taking care of party business.

As country after country in Eastern Europe overturned one-party rule last year, one of the first things they often did was to banish Communist Party committees from their factories. Why should one political party in an emerging multi-party system be given special status in the workplace, they asked? For that matter, why should any political party be given office space and other privileges to conduct its business in factories?

Those questions haven’t been heard much here yet. But they are bound to come as Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev pursues his goal of removing the dead hand of party bureaucracy from the economy so that it can function more efficiently. And politically, Gorbachev talks about the party having to earn its “leading role” by the commitment and dynamism of its activists.

In either case, Logunova and many thousands like her would appear headed for some painful changes.

“A full-time job as a party functionary is problematic,” Logunova conceded. “It’s very difficult to predict the course of events. There will be certain changes whether we like it or not. But the mechanism of the changes is unclear.”

For herself, she added, “I don’t fear losing this position. I have a profession, so I can work.” However, she admitted that if she has to return to her old job as a design engineer in the factory, she will take a one-third pay cut and lose the occasional use of the plant’s automobile.

And what does a factory party leader do to earn her relatively privileged position? That, it seems, is an easier question to ask than to answer.

While apparatchiks are supposed to be the vanguard of the working class, their jobs have little to do with taking care of the needs of the employees. There are official trade unions for that.

On paper, the primary party organizations are supposed to convey instructions from the top of the party pyramid to the bottom and keep tabs on the performance and advancement of people throughout the system.

At the New Dawn Perfume factory, that means first of all being a link between the party leadership and the 200 party members included in the plant’s 1,200-person work force. About 85% of those employees are women, and nearly one in four are on maternity leave or are otherwise inactive, said Logunova.

The party members are organized in seven cells: one each in two separate perfume manufacturing shops, another in the packing department, one in maintenance. And over them is the 13-member party buro headed since the autumn of 1988 by Ludmilla Logunova.

Logunova, a former activist in the Communist Youth League, only joined the party two years before that, very shortly after Gorbachev came to power.

“It was 1985-1986, and there were a lot of changes in our lives. So it was of some importance to me” to join, she said.

Unmarried, she lives with her parents, neither of whom are party members, and she has worked at New Dawn since graduation from a technical institute in 1982.

She wasn’t even a member of the plant’s party leadership when her predecessor returned to the factory floor after 10 years in the spacious, first-floor office set aside for the head of the committee. But Logunova had a reputation for honesty, and she got the job.

Of her predecessor, Logunova said only: “I think there should be a rotation in this position. A new person looks at all problems in a different way.”

Party statutes now being rewritten will probably limit the number of terms functionaries may serve.

As the factory’s party leader, Logunova is responsible for a monthly “political school” for party members among the workers. Lately, those sessions have consisted of “propagandists” coming in to introduce “the new system of managing the country’s economy” envisioned by Gorbachev’s reforms.

There is also a monthly Communist Youth League meeting at the plant for younger workers. One recent session discussed the maverick Moscow Communist and populist Boris N. Yeltsin, who was kicked out of the party’s top leadership for his accusations that Gorbachev is only half-hearted in his pursuit of change.

“On many questions, I do not accept his position,” Logunova said of Yeltsin.

One day earlier this week, dressed in a straight gray skirt and maroon and gray sweater, the young woman was in her office at 8:30 a.m. for an organizational meeting about upcoming local, district and republic-wide elections. Two New Dawn employees are running for office.

Later, she attended a meeting between plant construction specialists and local residents upset that a planned expansion is going to eliminate part of a children’s playground. Nothing was resolved, Logunova said.

Then she had more meetings--to arrange a meeting of management and party members. Finally, she spoke with an American visitor.

The turmoil in the party has clearly put her off balance.

“Of course, as a party member, I’m concerned about events taking place in the party now,” she said. “Changes in the party are necessary, at all levels.”

What that has meant so far is “that there is no unanimous opinion in the party. Maybe this is good. We always talked about the unity of the party before. But there are different kinds of unity.”

Still, she said, for all the talk “we admit that we are lagging behind in our decisions.” She wants to see more power over both decision-making and the use of party funds shifted to the primary party organizations.

And what would she do with that power?

Logunova blushed slightly and laughed nervously.

“That’s a very complicated question,” she responded. “We have come to the conclusion that, gaining freedom, now we don’t know what to do with it.”