Yeltsin Quits the Party : Bombshell Bowout Sparks Exodus of 100 Others : Maverick’s Dramatic Exit Stuns Delegates

Political maverick Boris N. Yeltsin, who has made a name for himself by taking on the Soviet Establishment and bucking convention, stunned the Soviet political world again today by announcing his resignation from the Communist Party. A left-wing faction with about 100 members followed suit shortly afterward.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev saw the leading liberals leave only hours after he had outflanked the right wing, defeating a bid by prominent hard-liner Yegor Ligachev to seize the key post of party deputy leader.

Yeltsin, in a bombshell declaration to the party’s 28th Congress, said he was quitting to devote himself to his role as president of the Russian Federation, the country’s most powerful republic.

“I am announcing my resignation from the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). In view of my . . . great responsibility toward the people of Russia and in connection with moves toward a multiparty state, I cannot fulfill only the instructions of the CPSU,” he said.

“As the highest elected figure in the republic, I have to bow to the will of the people,” the 59-year-old Yeltsin said.

His remarks were aimed obliquely at Gorbachev, who earlier this year was elected to a five-year term to a newly strengthened national presidency. Gorbachev has been criticized for retaining the top state and party jobs.

Little more than an hour later, a leader of the radical Democratic Platform faction announced his group was pulling out to form a new independent political party.

Vyacheslav Shostakovsky told the congress: “I am authorized to declare the division of the party and our intention to form an independent party.”

He also appealed to all democratic forces to rally for a special congress in the fall, saying: “We call all democratic parties to a congress in autumn, 1990, to create a broad political coalition.

“I and my colleagues from Democratic Platform were going to this congress with a hope that it would become a factor of resolute change towards democratic renovation of our party.

“Regrettably, our hopes did not materialize. The congress did not meet the hopes of the people for the division of party and state posts.”

The two dramatic developments came as the 10-day-old congress was considering nominations to the party’s policy-setting Central Committee.

When the session stopped for a break, delegates massed around individual Democratic Platform members, pressing them for an explanation.

“You are traitors!” one delegate exclaimed.

The 100 or so delegates from the reformist Democratic Platform had said they planned to leave the party during the congress, but until Yeltsin’s announcement they had refrained so they could join the debate on the status of the party’s assets.

It was the first split in the party since 1903, when the Menshevik faction broke from the Bolsheviks, who went on to lead the 1917 revolution.

Some congress delegates predicted that the departure of Yeltsin, who enjoys enormous popularity in Russia, could lead thousands of like-minded radicals among the party’s rank-and-file to follow him.

Many are furious over the party’s failure to abandon structures that served it through more than 70 years of dictatorship.

But unlike Democratic Platform, Yeltsin did not criticize the party or pledge to found another. His brief statement merely stressed that he saw party membership as incompatible with his role as Russian president.

His announcement, capping two years of rebellion since Gorbachev expelled him from the ruling Politburo for his radical views, was greeted at first by shocked silence.

Several military delegates shook their heads, then scattered applause followed interspersed with cries of “Shame!”

Yeltsin, a white-haired former construction engineer who joined the party 29 years ago, showed no emotion and marched out of the hall in the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses.

Gorbachev, reelected as party leader Tuesday and a frequent object of Yeltsin’s criticism, sat impassively during the statement. He then commented with a wry smile: “That ends the process logically.”

Yeltsin, a career Communist official, was brought to Moscow by Gorbachev to become party chief of the city and a member of the national ruling Politburo. But Yeltsin’s populist style, demands for faster and more radical economic reforms, and more local power for the republics and cities caused a dispute with Gorbachev that led to his ouster from the job in 1987.

However, his popularity allowed Yeltsin to make a comeback. He won a seat in the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1988, a seat in the Russian republic parliament last year and the republic’s presidency this summer.

At the current congress, Gorbachev has been the object of searing criticism from orthodox Communists angered by his reforms, which have stripped the party of power in favor of the government.

But the hard-liners nevertheless rallied behind his candidacy, concluding that only he can guarantee the party’s continued influence.