Communist Military Role Ruled Invalid : Soviet Union: A constitutional court says officers need not carry out party orders.

The Soviet Committee on Constitutional Compliance, in a landmark but controversial ruling, on Friday declared invalid military regulations that have required army and navy officers to carry out Communist Party policy and to follow the orders of party officials.

The committee held that the longstanding regulations, which ensured party control over the 5 million in the armed forces, violate the constitutional amendments that ended the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power.

But the ruling comes in the midst of a strong conservative resurgence that has significant support among the Soviet military, and it seems certain to fuel the substantial controversy over removing the armed forces from party control as part of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms.

The Committee on Constitutional Compliance, which functions as the country’s constitutional court but has no real powers of enforcement, ordered that the regulations be rewritten to reflect the constitutional amendments that a year ago formally ended the party’s “leading role” in the government and other Soviet institutions.

The committee noted that standing regulations, adopted in 1975 but dating to the founding of the Red Army, required that officers “should translate into life the policy of not only the Soviet government but the Communist Party as well.”

Other regulations have obliged garrison commanders to obey instructions from local party officials, as well as their military superiors.

In its decision, the committee held that both requirements contradict constitutional amendments adopted a year ago by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national parliament, that replaced one-party rule with political pluralism. The committee suspended those aspects of the regulations.

Gorbachev had already ordered the Soviet Defense Ministry to transform the extensive political structure within the armed forces so that it oversees the “patriotic and national education” of soldiers rather than their indoctrination in communism and party policy.

The number of political officers, found at every level of the armed forces down to the basic infantry company, is being cut back 37%, according to military spokesmen. But the party has about 1 million members in the armed forces, officials acknowledge, and the role of the party is so traditional in the armed forces and has remained so strong that their “depoliticization” is a running controversy here.

While conservatives oppose the move, radicals insist that until the break is complete, the military will remain an arm of the Communist Party.

Communist Party leaders have often called on local commanders in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for assistance against pro-independence governments there. In January, paratroopers seized Lithuania’s television broadcast center--with the deaths of 19 civilians--apparently on orders of party officials.

But reformers, who sought Friday’s ruling, now hope that with the diminution, if not the elimination, of party authority in the armed forces, troops will be unwilling to open fire on civilians protesting government policies.

Sergei S. Alexeyev, chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Compliance, said a major focus of its work now is the legislative authority of the president under the constitution and various resolutions of the Congress of People’s Deputies.

Without resolving the scope of the president’s legislative prerogatives, Alexeyev said, “we cannot really tackle the problem of the compliance of his decrees with the constitution.”

But Alexeyev noted that it nevertheless has suspended one decree, that banning demonstrations in the center of Moscow, and ordered revision of others, including a measure authorizing troops to patrol city streets.