Soviets Curb Alternative Radio Station : Kremlin: The move is seen as another attempt to restore government control over the media. Russian republic officials vow to strike back.

Radio Rossiya, which in the past two months has become a strong alternative political voice in the Soviet Union, was restricted this weekend to frequencies that cannot be received in many parts of the country in a Kremlin reassertion of its control over the mass media.

But the Russian Federation, the sponsor of Radio Rossiya and the country’s largest republic, vowed Sunday to ensure that the station’s uncensored reports are heard again throughout Russia.

“We will make them respect free speech and freedom of the press,” said Mikhail N. Poltoranin, the Russian republic’s information minister, as he denounced the central government’s latest restrictions on the news media.

“You will soon know our move--I cannot tell you what it will be because it would spoil the element of surprise, but I guarantee that it will be a very strong, very noisy and very effective move.”

With no prior notice, Radio Rossiya was banned this weekend from broadcasting on two of its three frequencies, cutting its audience almost in half, according to Anatoly G. Lysenko, Radio Rossiya’s general director.

The decision to restrict Radio Rossiya to a set of frequencies that do not reach 40% of Russia’s population was announced by an official of the State Committee for Television and Radio, but Poltoranin contended that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was behind the order and the committee, known as Gosteleradio, was only a “scapegoat.”

“Gosteleradio cannot take such an action,” Poltoranin said, “no more than the military commander of Vilnius could send tanks against the people himself. It’s a step by the highest level of government.”

Staff members at Radio Rossiya said rumors had been circulating widely that Gorbachev was angered by Radio Rossiya’s coverage of last month’s assault by Soviet soldiers on broadcast facilities in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, which killed 13 civilians.

Poltoranin saw the action against Radio Rossiya as aimed ultimately at the liberal government of the Russian Federation and its maverick president, Boris N. Yeltsin.

“Gorbachev will try to do something (to control us) but he will not be successful,” Poltoranin said. “The genie is out of the bottle, and never in history has anyone been able to put the genie back into the bottle.”

The Russian Federation will make a strong protest with the Soviet government today, Poltoranin said, and it will then take a more aggressive action. Part of the plan will be to break from Gosteleradio.

“We’ve had enough,” Poltoranin said. “We cannot trust them. They have no conscience.”

The new restrictions were not a surprise at Radio Rossiya, which began broadcasting part time on Dec. 10 on the frequencies of the Soviet Union’s two most popular stations, which are listened to by millions across the country.

“We expected that something like this would happen to us,” Lysenko said. “It is just the next stage of the open terror against journalists.”

Gosteleradio had earlier tried to shut down the Interfax news agency, a respected service that was an affiliate of Radio Moscow, its foreign language service. Next Gosteleradio took Vzglyad , a news and variety show that was the most popular program in the country, off the air in a dispute over content. Then reports on violence in Lithuania to be broadcast on the autonomous Television News Service were censored by a Gosteleradio official.

In each instance, Gosteleradio’s Communist leadership, apparently with the backing of the Kremlin, tried to turn back the clock to the days when the government’s version of events was the only version that the Soviet media reported.

But the attempts failed. Interfax is back in service without Gosteleradio’s assistance, Vzglyad is broadcasting via Leningrad Television, and Television News Service salvaged its honor when a government announcer had to read the official version of the news.

Lysenko and Poltoranin argued the attack on Radio Rossiya was part of a new Gorbachev strategy to censor the media, which was reflected in his call last month to suspend the country’s seven-month-old press law.

“Gorbachev does not like the truth,” Poltoranin said. “He wanted to deal a blow to the press law--the one guarantee of the democratic processes here.”