Angry Muscovites Clamor for Justice : Coup: Activists surround party headquarters to guard against loss of evidence.

Under siege by almost a thousand Muscovites demanding that its apparatchiks be brought to justice for their role in the failed coup, the headquarters of the Communist Party was closed down Friday and its 2,000 rooms sealed off so that no more evidence could be destroyed or carried away.

Hundreds of activists stood arm in arm surrounding the Central Committee of the Communist Party complex on Staraya Square all day long to prevent those guilty of participating in the junta from escaping with incriminating documents.

“We need all of these documents so we can bring this criminal party to trial,” Viktor N. Preobrazhensky, 57, a telephone repairman from Zheleznovodsk, said as he clutched the arms of other volunteer guards. “I have hated the Communist Party and its bosses my whole life. Now we can finally make them pay for the way they made us suffer so that they could live like kings.”

The closing of the elaborate complex was a clear example of the powerful influence the Russian people are having on the lightning-fast changes taking place in their country’s political system.

At one point, the mob stopped a white Volga sedan loaded with files related to the putsch, said Yevgeni V. Savostyanov, the Moscow city official who was supervising the sealing of the building. The files were immediately taken to Russia’s defense minister, Gen. Konstantin I. Kobets, for analysis.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who issued the closure order in his capacity as the party’s general secretary, agreed to submit to the people’s demands to shut the building after Russian lawmakers persuaded him that the enemies who tried to oust him were busily shredding and burning documents that would tie them to the attempted coup.

The officials warned him that “something is happening in the building of the Central Committee that needs to be stopped,” Gorbachev told Russian lawmakers.

At 4 p.m., Savostyanov spoke over the intercom system inside the Central Committee complex and informed all workers that they had an hour to get out.

“I was so happy to get to make that announcement,” said Savostyanov, chief of staff for Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov. “These were the 15 happiest minutes of my life.”

People whistled, jeered and shouted curses as clerks, secretaries and technicians left the building carrying sacks of personal belongings.

When a man shouted: “Kremlin bitches!” at four female employees walking out of the building, one of the women, a librarian, whacked him over the head with her umbrella, and the rest of the women screamed insults back at the crowd.

A computer programmer lowered his head as he scurried past the angry demonstrators with a bulging sports bag and a tennis racket slung over his shoulder.

“I personally committed no crime,” said the programmer, who gave his name only as Vladimir. “People should only be punished for concrete crimes. I do not like the way this is being done. I don’t like crowds, because crowds only bring destruction.”

But it appeared that the real targets of the crowd’s wrath--the top party officials who live in luxurious apartments, are driven around in fancy cars and have spacious summer houses--had found other ways out of the building. Most likely, city officials said, their exit was through the underground tunnels that connect the building with the Kremlin, KGB headquarters and other buildings.

“There are a lot of underground routes as well as a secret metro system that goes all the way to their dachas in Kuntsevo,” on the city’s outskirts, according to a member of the Moscow City Council, who said he has seen maps of the city showing the subway system.

To many of the demonstrators, this ominous square was the symbol of treacheries committed by the party and of the firm control its leaders wielded over almost every aspect of Russians’ lives by frightening them into submission.

“For my whole life the sight of Staraya Square has aroused fear inside of me,” said Anatoly Filichkin, 34, a history teacher. “No one ever walked by this building. All traffic--except for the shiny black Volgas of the party chiefs--was forbidden to drive on this ‘sacred’ square.”

Although Gorbachev’s order called only for the temporary seizure of the building, the crowd seemed confident that it would never be returned to the party. They were already discussing what it should become in the future.

“I feel that my children will have a chance for a bright future,” said Nail Solakhidinov, 33, a lawyer, “because no one from this horrible gray building will tell them how to live, how to think, how to believe or how to eat.”

Some passers-by, however, said they were disgusted by the crowd’s behavior and disappointed over the decision to shut the party’s headquarters.

The large red Communist flag was hauled down, and demonstrators hung the new white, blue and red flag of Russia on the door of the building. A large sign saying, “This Building Is Sealed” went up over the entry to the Moscow Party Committee next door.

“This action is worse than the junta’s action!” a 64-year-old Communist Party member and World War II veteran said. “I feel very sad about what is happening. The party did not do only wrong things.”

But the people, standing vigil at the Communist Party headquarters, said they felt a special righteous satisfaction because, for once, the Communist bosses were at their mercy.

The mob laughed heartily when a 5-year-old boy, coaxed by his parents, ran through the human barricade keeping back the crowd, unzipped his jeans, urinated on the building and turned around with a proud grin.

A middle-aged man rushed up to the child, lifted him into the air and said triumphantly, “This is a free Russian boy!”