Gorbachev Grants His Blessing to New Liberal Movement : Soviet Union: The group could pose a threat to the Communist Party, which the president heads.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev gave his blessing Tuesday to a new political movement formed by a group of prominent liberals, although it could grow to pose the greatest threat yet to the Soviet Communist Party that Gorbachev leads.

Vitaly N. Ignatenko, Gorbachev’s press secretary, said the president welcomed the organization of the Democratic Reform Movement, whose leaders include former Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and several top Gorbachev advisers, saying that it supports his perestroika reform movement.

“We see the declaration as an invitation for cooperation of all democratic movements,” Ignatenko said. “It is clear that the movement is non-confrontational. It inspires cooperation from all those who support perestroika. We view the movement in this light.”

Ignatenko added that Gorbachev, head of the Soviet Communist Party since 1985, has no plans to resign as its general secretary. “Gorbachev will remain leader of the Communist Party as long as he considers it possible for himself,” Ignatenko said.

But Gorbachev’s senior adviser, Alexander N. Yakovlev, said in an article in the government newspaper Izvestia that the Communist Party has demonstrated that it is incapable of reforming itself.

“We must honestly admit that the democratic revival of the Communist Party--its break from its dictatorial past and reformation into an able-bodied political organization--has not happened,” wrote Yakovlev, a long-time Communist Party ideologist and still a senior party member. “The revolution in the society has not led to a revolution in the party.”

Yakovlev, acknowledged as the “godfather” of perestroika, as Gorbachev’s reform program is known, said the only way to keep the country from sliding back to the time when the fate of the people was “at the mercy of forces whose moral image is notoriously known by their past” would be to create a workable multi-party system.

“Therefore, I share and support the idea of creating a democratically oriented movement or party based on law, reason, human revival and uncompromising loyalty to the ideals of freedom,” Yakovlev continued. “The Democratic Movement must overcome its amorphousness and internal conflicts.”

Ignatenko said that Yakovlev and Shevardnadze, both of whom he described as among Gorbachev’s most trusted advisers, had discussed plans for the new political movement with the president, and that in a broad way, Gorbachev had backed their efforts as a healthy initiative for Soviet society.

“Mikhail Gorbachev knew of the initiative . . . for these comrades (Yakovlev and Shevardnadze) did not hide their intention from him,” Ignatenko told a press briefing, “but I could not go as far as to describe the president as a ‘consultant’ at its birth.”

Dozens of parties have been formed since the Communist Party gave up its constitutional monopoly on political power a year ago, but no strong opposition parties have yet emerged to challenge it on a national basis.

Democratic Russia, an umbrella movement that is supported by many parties in the largest Soviet republic, mounted Boris N. Yeltsin’s successful election campaign for the presidency of the Russian Federation, but it is far from an organized party.

Yakovlev and Shevardnadze joined Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov, Leningrad Mayor Anatoly A. Sobchak and the other organizers of the new political movement in a declaration that stressed that their group would try to unite all democratically minded people in the country, not just the Russian Federation. Until now, the Democratic Movement has been divided by republics with separate movements in Russia, the Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and the Baltic republics.

“The experience of the last two years has shown that the unconnected, detached democratic forces in the republics have a very negative effect on the execution of reforms,” Sobchak told a press conference at Moscow City Hall.

Organizers of the new movement said they believe that it “could unite the broadest circles of progressive Soviet people with the aim of establishing a national party tomorrow.”

Whether the new group would become a full-fledged, legal political party or remain a loose movement drawing members from many political parties, including the Communist, is a major question, which organizers said should be decided during a national conference in September.

Several leaders, however, came out immediately in favor of a party that would contest parliamentary elections expected next year.

Because the majority of those who helped organize the movement are currently leading liberal members of the Communist Party, the creation of a new party could, quite clearly, lead to a massive exodus from the 16.3-million-member Communist Party.

Sobchak said that many rank-and-file Communists, in fact, support radical democratic changes and should be recruited for the new movement.

Sobchak, Popov and Yeltsin are among those who have already quit the Communist Party, and Shevardnadze suggested to the press conference that he was preparing his resignation.

“Our main goal is to save democracy from the dangers and threats of dictatorship, chaos and anarchy,” Shevardnadze said. The new party “should be the model of democracy. It should be massive.”