Gorbachev Money Decree Stirs Panic Among Savers : Soviet Union: Large-denomination ruble bills are declared worthless. Besieged banks refuse to open.

Angry crowds, afraid that most of their savings would be lost under a government monetary reform, besieged banks across the Soviet Union on Wednesday in a new panic threatening the country’s fragile economy.

With wads of bank notes clutched in their hands, they pounded on the doors and windows of neighborhood savings banks, demanding that the money, large-denomination bills declared worthless the night before, be replaced with smaller bills.

But the banks, caught unawares by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s decree, refused to open although customers had begun lining up before dawn. Most banks had no instructions on how to carry out the exchange--the decree said only limited amounts of large bills could be exchanged without question--and no cash to do so.

Gorbachev’s decree had been intended to strengthen the ruble, the Soviet currency, to dampen inflation and, above all, to drain all available cash from the black market, but in its first day the measure appeared to have accelerated the disintegration of the country’s economy.

“The utter immorality of this decree is bound to cost the central government what little confidence people still have in it,” Ruslan Khasbulatov, vice president of the Russian Federation, the country’s largest republic, said in an interview. “Over the past two years, more than 70 billion of worthless rubles have been pumped into the economy by the government, and now the government is virtually confiscating this counterfeit money.

“In a word, it is stealing people’s hard labor and then crushing their hopes for a better life. The target may be the Mafia, the black marketeers, but the real victims will be little people, ordinary workers who kept their limited savings in cash.”

Police were summoned to maintain order at thousands of banks throughout the country as people sought to exchange their 50- and 100-ruble notes, withdrawn from circulation by Gorbachev, and grew angry when they were turned away by bank officials.

Chaos ensued at railway stations and airline terminals as travelers were told that their large-denomination notes would not be accepted. Tens of thousands of travelers were likely to be stranded in Moscow alone, unable to buy tickets home.

“Commerce in Moscow, and probably most other large cities, will come to a standstill until this exchange is worked out,” Yuri Luzhkov, the chairman of the Moscow City Council’s executive committee, said.

At major telegraph offices, however, some holders of the outlawed bills managed to buy postal money orders with the money, sending it across town, or even around the block, as a way of getting small-denomination bills for big.

And black market currency dealers, who normally buy and sell foreign currencies, started taking rubles, big notes for small ones, often at less than half the face value, betting that with such a profit margin they would be able to pay the bribes necessary to get the bills exchanged.

The government, which said it had spent a year preparing the measure but clearly had not anticipated its impact, appealed to people not to panic, but officials of the State Bank, assigned to carry out the directive, admitted they could give no firm assurances to those worried that their savings would be lost.

On the contrary, the full regulations published Wednesday made clear that those workers who wanted to exchange more than a month’s pay, a maximum of 1,000 rubles, would have to explain the origins of their money and why they kept it in cash, not in a savings bank. Committees would assess each case, and tax collectors and the KGB security police would investigate.

For most people, it will be impossible to produce written records on the source of a lifetime’s savings, which many keep at home rather than in banks, or of legal transactions in the country’s new small businesses, which operate on a cash-and-carry basis.

The government has also restricted withdrawals from people’s savings accounts to 500 rubles monthly in an effort to keep money from flowing back into the overheated economy. This is almost twice the average monthly salary of 270 rubles, but only slightly more than it costs to buy a pair of fashionable imported sneakers at free-market prices.

At the official rate of exchange, 100 rubles is worth about $185, but its value on the street is about $4 or $5; at the new commercial rate of exchange, 100 rubles is worth $55 and at the tourist rate about $18.50. Converted into highly sought consumer goods, $1 might buy about 50 rubles in a further devaluation.

Rumors have recurred frequently that the government was planning such a monetary reform, but only last week Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, the former finance minister, had denied it.

Around the country, parliaments in the Baltic republics as well as in Georgia responded angrily to the measure, and legislators called on their governments to ease the burden on people there.

Long lines had formed at banks in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and other cities by dawn on Wednesday as people came to cash in their high-denomination notes.

“Comrades! Citizens! Do not panic!” Valentina S. Kravchenko, the manager of a neighborhood bank in central Moscow, shouted as a crowd of 400 threatened to break through the bank’s iron grill. “Tomorrow, we will have money, and then you will have your money. . . .

“Please, comrades, killing us will not bring your savings back. If you must, march on the Kremlin, but don’t break our doors down so we will be able to work tomorrow.”

Kravchenko’s promise of money today or Friday satisfied a few, but many more, whose cash holdings were greater than the limit allowed by the decree, were clearly outraged.

“I’m wiped out,” Timofei B. Opolinsky, a retired truck driver who now does odd jobs, said. “I have 3,000 rubles, but as a pensioner I can only turn in 200. But this money is most of our savings, and now it is just so much confetti. I can’t even get money out of our account now.”