Conservative Ligachev Resists New Pressure for Him to Step Down : Soviet Union: The Politburo veteran comes under fire in the Central Committee over his Marxist stand.

Yegor K. Ligachev, who as the senior member of the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling Politburo continues to voice his beliefs and those of many other conservatives in traditional Marxist values, is coming under renewed pressure to resign from the party leadership in a major struggle over the future of socialism here.

Ligachev, long a target for radicals outside the party and in its lower ranks, is now under attack within the party hierarchy, including its policy-making Central Committee, in a sharpening of the in-fighting over the next stage of the country’s political and economic reforms.

Strongly committed to socialism and to continuing the party’s role in shaping the Soviet Union, Ligachev is fighting back, warning that many avant-garde reformers are really working to restore capitalism and to demolish the party as the country’s leading political force.

The attacks on him, Ligachev told the Central Committee, should be seen as “a campaign against the party and Soviet power.”

“The time has come to demonstrate resolute resistance to these anti-socialist forces,” he said, according to accounts of the meeting published Sunday in the party daily Pravda.

The renewed confrontation between Ligachev and the party’s reform wing is part of the broader struggle certain to precede the party congress, scheduled for July 2, and thus shape the party and its policies for coming years.

In pressing Ligachev to resign “for the good of the party,” the radical reformers have attempted to put their orthodox opponents on the defensive by attacking their most prominent and articulate spokesman.

But Ligachev, in reply, called for a purge of party members, including some in the Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, who are found to be involved in “factional and opposition struggle or taking part in anti-socialist movements.”

“There are forces and people in our society,” Ligachev said, responding to the radicals, “who, covering themselves and manipulating the slogans of perestroika, are carrying out their intention to demolish our socialist society and the party, to revise the Leninist principles of its structure and work.

“In short, they want to transform the Soviet Communist Party into a social democratic party, to introduce private property in the country and to restore capitalist production. They cite examples from Eastern Europe, but there is an evident deviation from socialism.”

Viktor M. Mishin, secretary of the Soviet Federation of Trade Unions and the former first secretary of the Communist Youth League, had urged Ligachev earlier during the Central Committee meeting to resign and thus underscore the party’s desire to break with its past ideological dogmatism.

Ligachev, despite his acknowledged virtues as a party leader, is now one of yesterday’s men, Mishin asserted, really beyond change and a hindrance to the party he has served for most of his 69 years.

“Can Ligachev the politician transform himself fundamentally today?” Mishin asked. “Yes, but at the price of breaking his own personality. Do Communist Ligachev and the party need this? No. Is he useful to the party as he remains? No.

“I do not propose to dismiss Ligachev from his position as a Central Committee secretary. But I do make use of my right as his comrade in the party and the Central Committee to request Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev to assess all the circumstances carefully, the political situation in the country and party, and to resign voluntarily.”

Ligachev had already become the principal target of recent pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow and other cities. For the protesters, Ligachev represents the conservative government and party bureaucrats that many people feel have slowed or even blocked key reforms.

The avant-garde newspaper Moscow News published a “political profile” of him early last month that accused him of opposing democracy and deceiving the people. Accompanying the article, unprecedented in its harshness, was a photograph showing the silver-haired Ligachev with his arm stretched out in a Nazi-like salute.

Pravda, in its report of a Central Committee meeting in February, showed Ligachev attempting to defend himself against charges that he decided to send troops into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to suppress a demonstration there last April and consequently bears responsibility for the deaths of 20 people that resulted.

Ligachev has also been accused by two top government investigators of official corruption, of protecting bribe-takers and, by implication, of being corrupt himself--all charges that Ligachev has vehemently denied and on which he has won Central Committee backing.

Although left unsaid, these controversies strengthened Mishin’s argument that Ligachev has become a political liability for the party when it seeks the support of voters in elections and prepares for the party congress.

“Resignation is not a tragedy or a defeat,” Mishin said, addressing Ligachev at the Kremlin meeting. “It is a conscientious move of a person who has done what he could, who has played his role. . . . (He) already has a well deserved place in the political history of our country.”

But Ligachev’s continued membership in the Politburo, Mishin contended, tells the country that divisions remain in the top leadership over the scope and speed of reform.

Ligachev himself has repeatedly declared his support for perestroika, as the reform program is known, and personally for President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, but Mishin argued that Ligachev’s image, if not his position, remains that of an adherent to orthodoxy.