Leading Soviet Reformers Take Step Toward New Party

Leading Soviet liberals, among them several of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closest advisers, launched a new political movement on Monday in a bold effort to split the ruling Communist Party and establish its first real rival in more than 70 years.

Calling on the country’s democrats, including “the reformist wing of the Communist Party,” to unite in an effort to pull the Soviet Union out of its profound crisis, they announced the formation of the Democratic Reform Movement, to be followed in September by the likely establishment of a new party.

The signers of the declaration included former Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze; Alexander N. Yakovlev, the architect of the perestroika reforms and still Gorbachev’s senior adviser, and seven other political figures of national stature.

So dramatic was the breach of Communist Party discipline, showing the depth of the divisions in its ranks, that the declaration could well mean that its almost 75 years of power are at an end, for the unity that it demanded of its members is gone--and so are they.

“This document . . . can become one of historic, epochal importance,” Shevardnadze said of the seven-page statement. “If we speak about the actual situation in our country, I think we are making a very important move.

“This does not contradict the principles of perestroika; on the contrary, our major task and main goal is to save perestroika, to save democracy, to develop the democratic processes and to create guarantees for there to be no reversion to the past totalitarian regime.”

The other signers included Gavriil Popov and Anatoly A. Sobchak, the newly elected radical mayors of Moscow and Leningrad; Russian Prime Minister Ivan Silayev; Col. Alexander Rutskoi, elected vice president of the Russian Federation last month as radical populist Boris N. Yeltsin’s running mate; Stanislav S. Shatalin and Nikolai Y. Petrakov, both former economic advisers to Gorbachev, and Arkady Volsky, a longtime Communist Party official who has extensive ties to the country’s military-industrial complex.

In their declaration, they propose that the Democratic Reform Movement attempt to unite reformers within the Communist Party and former party members and bring together democratic movements across the country at a national conference in September.

They had spoken openly about forming a center-left party that would support Gorbachev and act as a counterweight to conservatives, both within and outside the party. And the relationship between Gorbachev and several of the signers, notably Yakovlev, is such that most here would assume that they had discussed the move.

Gorbachev, who remains general secretary of the Communist Party, has been under mounting pressure to quit his party post to concentrate on his duties as president, but he has replied that the time is not yet proper for such a division.

In their manifesto, the liberals effectively break with the Communists with scathing criticism of its leadership of the country.

“We and all the country can be saved only by an immediate consolidation of the most conscious, constructive and responsible part of society, which is able to keep it from anarchy and lead it through the most complicated transition from bureaucratic dictatorship to democracy,” the statement said.

Politically, it backed the talks through which Gorbachev is trying to hold nine of the 15 republics together and a new state based on a written constitution and laws.

Economically, the signers of the declaration call for a free market, including privatization and freedom to encourage entrepreneurs.

The declaration urged a search for a national compromise, saying that the country would not survive a civil war.

“The country can either take the path of further, cardinal transformations, the liberalization of society and genuine human freedom,” the declaration said. “Or there can be a revolt of reaction blinded by its hate of freedom and progress, a prospective loss of privileges, a new dictatorship and restoration of the order that has proved its social destructiveness. National tragedy would then be inevitable.”

The democrats, the statement complains, are “dispersed and very often fall into conflicts.”

“This simplifies the struggle of reaction forces against the emerging democracy,” the statement said. “On the other hand, the amorphousness of the democratic wing undermines the masses’ faith in the ability of the democrats to unite the country on the course to civil stabilization, real actions and social progress.”