Leaders Slow in Dealing With Crises, KGB Says

MOSCOW — Members of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s security service, have accused the country’s leadership of acting too slowly to deal with its multiple crises and declared that they will act without hesitation to protect the socialist system here if they see it threatened by the growing political turmoil.

In extraordinary public appeal to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, members of the KGB’s headquarters staff warned as well of growing divisions within the Communist Party, weakening its ability to lead the country, and politicians they see as power-hungry speculators masquerading as advocates of reform.

“Cheka (KGB) collectives say they are perplexed because the leading organs of the country, while possessing the data that anticipated developing negative phenomena, clearly lagged with vitally important political decisions and are still too slow and indecisive,” the KGB officers said in their open letter.

“Gambling on glasnost and the pluralism of opinions, loud-mouthed advocates of (certain) social interests denigrate the sacred name of Lenin and the notions of Motherland, patriotism and October (the Bolshevik Revolution) that are so dear to every Soviet person.”

The three-page letter, addressed to members of the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Parliament, as well as to Gorbachev, expresses firm support for perestroika, Gorbachev’s program of reforms, but warns that it is endangered by the present crises.

The letter, a copy of which was made available this week by liberal deputies to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and the independent Soviet news service Postfactum, reflects both the intense political struggle under way over the country’s future course and the anxiety about its outcome.

Until now, Gorbachev has enjoyed the KGB’s full support, according to most political observers here, and the current chairman, Gen. Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, is his appointment and, until now, assumed to be a close supporter.

But the letter is as strongly critical of Gorbachev by implication as it is of radical politicians well to his left, and it above all questions the quality of his leadership.

The letter, said to have been approved at a recent meeting of KGB headquarters staff members, contained a hard-edged warning:

“Soviet Cheka (KGB) forces act and will act firmly, consistently and reliably in the interests of the people. They will protect the security of the socialist system, the rights and freedom of each person and our socialist democracy.”

On paper, this is precisely the KGB’s legal duty. Under Soviet law, the Committee for State Security, as the KGB is formally known, is charged with the defense of the country’s socialist system from attempts to overthrow it as well as with intelligence-gathering and counter-intelligence tasks.

But liberal deputies interpreted the letter, presented as the opinion of KGB members rather than the organization itself, as a veiled threat.