WORLD : Top Gorbachev Aide Leaves Post, Calls Leader’s Acts ‘Criminal’

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s top economic adviser has left his post after signing a letter accusing the Soviet president of criminal acts to prop up his “regime,” a spokesman said today.

Economic adviser Nikolai Petrakov joined a growing list of reformers who have left Gorbachev’s inner circle or been fired as Gorbachev has begun to use more hard-line tactics. It was not immediately clear whether Petrakov had resigned or been removed from office.

Two of Petrakov’s associates said Gorbachev had been enraged by the open letter, which criticized him for tolerating the military attack Sunday against a Lithuanian television station that left 14 people dead.

“A regime in its death throes has made a last-ditch stand: Economic reform has been blocked, censorship of the media reinstated, brazen demagoguery revived, and an open war on the (15 Soviet) republics declared,” said the letter, published by the weekly Moscow News.

“The events in Lithuania can be unambiguously classified as criminal,” the letter said. It said that Gorbachev “justified or approved the tactics . . . in Lithuania.”

The weekly in its headline on the letter described the regime as “stooping to crime.”