Soviet Party Dismisses 2 Defiant Investigators : Corruption: The ousting of a pair of popular heroes could spark anti-Communist protests at rallies for more democratization.

Two fiery, outspoken government investigators whose unprecedented crusade against corruption in the Soviet leadership made them heroes of the common man were kicked out of the Communist Party, officials said Thursday--a move that could lead to deeper public disaffection with the party itself.

Their supporters warned that the action against Telman Gdlyan and Nikolai Ivanov could spark angry anti-Communist protests at a rally scheduled to be held Sunday in the capital, during which demonstrators intend to call for greater democratization of Soviet society.

“We are being dragged through the mud, and we don’t have the right to express our own viewpoint within the party,” Gdlyan said in a telephone interview. “People who themselves are involved in corruption gave false evidence against us.”

Nevertheless, the decision to dismiss Gdlyan and Ivanov from the party, which once would have been a severe punishment, today is likely to add to their public luster and increase dissatisfaction with the party.

The latest move against the pair, taken in a closed-door meeting Wednesday night, came nine months after they tantalized the country by announcing that Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev, a leading conservative and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s main adversary, had taken money or gifts in return for protecting corrupt officials.

They also said two former Politburo members, Grigory V. Romanov and Mikhail A. Solomentsev, as well as a former Supreme Court chief justice were under investigation.

Ligachev unequivocally denied the allegation against him and it was dismissed by a special parliamentary commission. The two investigators were fired from their posts, allegedly for “gross violations of law,” including threatening witnesses and jailing them for months without due cause.

But even after questions arose about the methods the two used in their inquiry, both were elected overwhelmingly to the Congress of People’s Deputies--the national legislature--on the basis of their personal popularity and widespread suspicion of an official cover-up to protect the top party leadership.

Gdlyan and Ivanov are seen here by many as courageous, defiant critics of a party whose corruption reached all the way up to members of the family of former leader Leonid I. Brezhnev.

During Wednesday night’s meeting in Moscow, Gdlyan and Ivanov were accused of violating party rules and deviating from the party line, and the overwhelming majority of the 350 party leaders present voted to expel them, according to an official at city party headquarters.

“The ruling to evict us from the party is probably not all a bad thing,” Ivanov said in a telephone interview from Leningrad. “The decay of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union races along, and I think by the end of this year the party will no longer exist.

“But without doubt, this was an order from the Kremlin,” he contended. “The leadership of the country and the party as well is more and more openly demonstrating their desire to protect all organized criminals. On the other hand, people who display the desire to fight against corruption are more and more deemed unacceptable.”

The Soviet prosecutor’s office said earlier this month it plans to ask the Soviet Parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity that was protecting Gdlyan and Ivanov and then to bring charges against them.

Demonstrations have been held in Moscow and other cities sporadically over the last several months, with protesters asserting that Gdlyan and Ivanov are being harassed.

On Feb. 14, about 20,000 workers in the Zelenograd district of Moscow walked off their jobs to attend a rally in support of the pair.

The two also were among the leaders of a pro-democracy demonstration on Feb. 4 by about 200,000 people outside the Kremlin, the biggest gathering of its kind since the Bolshevik revolution. At the demonstration, Gdlyan urged protesters to burn their Communist Party cards.