Despite Soviet Party Reshaping, Reformers Seek Split : Politics: They reject the changes as cosmetic. A heated debate is expected as the Communist congress opens Monday.

In advance of next week’s confrontation over the future of Soviet reform, the embattled Communist Party proposed Thursday to reshape its leadership and broaden its ranks. But reformers rejected the changes as cosmetic and vowed to split off into a rival political force.

The official daily Pravda published draft guidelines for the party, whose prestige has eroded along with the public welfare, in preparation for the 28th party congress scheduled to begin in the Kremlin on Monday. The gathering will determine whether President Mikhail S. Gorbachev gets a new lease on the life of his perestroika reform program.

The new rules would change the party leader’s title from general secretary to chairman, and they appear to propose replacing the current Politburo with a collective presidium that would likely include party leaders from the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics.

Those steps are aimed at appeasing pro-democracy Communists who have been quitting in droves in recent months, disenchanted with the failure of the leading political force to arrest a steady decline in living standards or prevent the country from splitting apart at its ethnic seams.

The proposed revisions would loosen the party’s grip on day-to-day running of the government and further the transformation of what still is a monopoly on political power into a more traditional, Western-style party.

But the language of the draft was imprecise, and the proposals may be substantially revised after what is expected to be a heated debate at the party congress.

Reformers in the party’s democratic wing have demanded transition to multi-party government, with the dominant Communists relinquishing control to elected bodies and returning the party’s wealth to the general public.

“What has been stolen should be restored to the people,” reformist delegate Vyacheslav N. Shostakovsky told journalists at a news conference.

Shostakovsky and other leaders of the Democratic Platform, an unofficial left-wing faction struggling against a rising tide of Marxist conservatism in the party, immediately denounced the draft rules as “completely composed in the old spirit.” They said they have lost hope that the party can escape from its escalating crisis of public confidence.

“In reality, despite the many statements of leaders, the Communist Party has shown it is simply incapable of reforming itself,” said Vladimir N. Lysenko, one of 4,700 delegates to the congress and an outspoken advocate of democratic reform. “It is impossible to achieve consensus in the party.”

Gorbachev has made clear that he wants to remain party leader as well as head of state, arguing that his reforms could collapse into economic chaos amid a distracting shift of political power.

Both left-wing reformers and the burgeoning conservative right have pressed for division of the party leadership and presidential functions, and some expect hard-liner Yegor K. Ligachev to challenge Gorbachev for the party leadership during the congress.

Gorbachev’s struggle to stay in power will frustrate the work of the congress, Lysenko said, because time and attention will be absorbed in a battle of personalities.

Many of those who support radical change to market economics and pluralism have said they will leave the party if it fails to wrest itself from the influence of inflexible Marxists.

More than 20,000 members in Moscow alone turned in their party cards on Monday and Tuesday, said Shostakovsky, head of the Moscow Higher Party School that educates the Communist elite.

“What we have seen is a U-turn in the party’s policies toward conservatism,” Shostakovsky complained. “We are now witnessing the decline into another type of authoritarianism.”

He blamed a lack of unity among the democratic forces within the party for the failure to “combat a common enemy.”

The pro-democracy activists, who account for only about 2% of the congress delegates, have no hope of reconciling with the rest of the party and should pull out and form “an independent political organization” to press for stepped-up reform, said Stepan Sulakshin, another leader of the Democratic Platform.

That would create the first visible split of the Communist Party since 1922, and Gorbachev has warned that it would play into the hands of the opponents of perestroika.

Gorbachev has been left guarding the center of a political spectrum that has become polarized as social conditions worsen and support weakens for the perestroika program he introduced at the last congress in early 1986.

Hard-line Marxists blame his tinkering with the system for the current economic disaster that has emptied store shelves and demoralized the population. Critics on the left accuse the party leader of caving in to conservative holdovers from past leaderships who have resisted the reform drive.

One of the proposed changes to the party rules would allow replacements to the Central Committee, which now has 249 members but has had more than 350, between congresses, enabling the leadership to weed out those who fail to go along new directions and policies.

Other revisions that make concessions to the left would remove communism’s political taint from private property and religious belief.

But the steps fall far short of the radical measures that Democratic Platform’s supporters say are needed for economic recovery and for reducing party interference in government and industry.

In an effort to bolster support, the draft rules push for widening access to the party that currently includes only about 8% of Soviet adults. They also reduce mandatory dues, currently at 3% of income for most members.

Membership would be open to the religious and to young people who skipped involvement in the party’s youth organization, Komsomol.

The party had about 18 million members after the last national congress and surged to more 19 million in the first years of perestroika. But officials have conceded that at least 130,000 resigned during the first five months of this year, and Sulakshin said he expects more than 2.5 million to quit.

Under the proposed revisions, party members would also have to pay less in mandatory dues, from the current maximum of 3% of monthly earnings now to 2.5%.