Soviets Plan to ‘Cleanse’ Party of Radicals

The Soviet Communist Party, faced with growing divisions in its ranks, is preparing to oust those radical reformers who promote “social democracy” rather than the party’s platform, informed political sources said Wednesday.

Intended as a major “cleansing” of the party, the move will attempt to preempt the plans of some radicals to break away when the party holds a pivotal congress in July by expelling them and re-establishing political discipline among remaining party members.

The campaign is expected to begin within a few days, according to the sources, following the publication of a “letter to Communists” from the top party leadership outlining the need to tighten party discipline and to adhere to a basic ideology.

The letter will also stress, the sources said, that the drive must be conducted within party rules and on the basis of the new platform, that it must be focused on individuals rather than on groups and that, above all, it must not degenerate into a full-scale purge, a word at which all here shudder.

“No one plans to oust people by platforms or groups,” one party source commented. “Each party member will be invited to define his position and make a decision as regards party membership. Each individual party member will have to determine what his position will be.”

In seeking to eliminate the voices of those reformers demanding far more radical changes, the campaign seems certain to make the 18.8-million-member party much more homogenous, forcing out those on the extreme left and perhaps those on the extreme right.

The most likely targets for the campaign, the sources said, are the more than 60,000 members of the party’s Democratic Platform, a newly formed faction that believes that “Communist ideology has exhausted itself” and that is pressing for more radical reforms.

The group, which has 162 local clubs in 102 Soviet cities, has been debating whether, when and how to break with the Communist Party and establish itself as a social democratic party. The new party would be oriented toward evolutionary changes to establish socialism, retaining a market-based economy but with protection for the underprivileged.

Arkady M. Murashov, a leader of the opposition Inter-Regional Group of Deputies in the Soviet Parliament, said organizers of a proposed social democratic party have planned a founding conference for May and that the Communist Party is “in a race on who acts first.”

While some Communist Party members have already resigned to join the social democrats, Murashov predicted that there would be mass resignations once the new party is founded. “We expect at least half of the members to follow our example,” he said. “In any case, we are talking about millions joining the new party--instantly and on the spot.”

But the campaign would probably leave untouched the Soviet Union’s most popular opposition politician, populist Boris N. Yeltsin, who remains a member of the Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee. Despite his open and sharp criticism of many party policies and of the its leadership, Yeltsin has stopped well short of forming a faction within the party, let alone a new party, relying instead on his immense personal appeal.

The anticipated campaign appears to have resulted from a fundamental understanding, reached within the past week, between progressives and conservatives in the party’s ruling Politburo, and this may ultimately prove more important than the campaign itself.

Conservatives seem to have accepted in this agreement the far-reaching reforms sought by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to transform the Soviet economy on the basis of market forces. Progressives, for their part, have agreed on the need to recognize the party’s “merits” and not blame it for all the country’s ills; they also seem to accept the necessity of greater party discipline, even at the cost of ousting some past allies.

This understanding, if confirmed, would resolve some of the deepest divisions within the Soviet leadership over the course of perestroika , as Gorbachev’s program of political, economic and social reforms is known.

Gorbachev is now pushing a package of more than 20 measures to overhaul the Soviet economy, with some of the first to be adopted about May 1 and others to come into effect over the summer and autumn.

Prominent conservatives, who have long insisted on the need to keep the Soviet economy within the framework of central planning and based on state ownership, are already talking with equanimity about the transition to “market conditions” while retaining elements of the old system.

Much of the government and party bureaucracy remains in the hands of conservative apparatchiki , as do many state-owned enterprises, and their support of the reforms, or at least their acquiescence in them, will be crucial.

Progressives, who hold positions closer to the center, have begun to far more freely criticize their one-time allies, the radicals, accusing them of losing sight of the urgent need for a better economic performance if perestroika is to succeed.

The campaign appears to follow closely the call last month of Yegor K. Ligachev, a senior Politburo member regarded as the party’s leading conservative, who demanded that the policy-making Central Committee begin such a “cleansing” and rid itself of radicals who distort its policies and undermine its discipline.

Although a liberal party source denied that Ligachev and his supporters within the Central Committee had forced others in the leadership to accept the campaign, he does appear the winner in what must have been a major showdown within the party’s top ranks.

The campaign is certain to hit such well-known radicals as historian Yuri N. Afanasyev, a leader of the Inter-Regional Group of Deputies, according to political sources here.

“These people are not Communists, and the process of evaluating each member will make clear who is who and where everyone stands,” one influential conservative party source said. “This will be a cleansing of our ranks--not a purge, definitely not--and we will emerge smaller but stronger as a party.”

But the drive could also reach some prominent members of the new political Establishment, including economist Stanislav S. Shatalin, a key adviser to Gorbachev, who declared himself to be a social democrat during last month’s meeting of the Central Committee.