A Reformed Pravda Reappears : Media: The former Communist Party newspaper has shed its visage of Lenin and promises to provide news, not propaganda.

Pravda, the Soviet newspaper that for decades has espoused the Communist line, was back in print Saturday, a week after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered it shut down, accusing its staff of complicity with the hapless Kremlin putsch.

But it was not quite the same Pravda.

Gone from its masthead were the profile of Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin and all mention of the Communist Party.

Instead of the hard-line Communist propaganda that it has been pumping out since it was founded in 1912, the front page of Saturday’s Pravda carried a political cartoon mocking a line from the Soviet anthem, which it would have considered sacrosanct in earlier days.

The cartoon depicted a column of demonstrators that had smashed through a sign reading “Union Indestructible.” The demonstrators had broken off the “In” so that it read “Union Destructible” and had left big black footprints across the slogan.

On the fourth page, another political cartoon, reprinted from the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, showed a huge Yeltsin looming over a tiny caricature of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former head of the Communist Party. The caption, in English, read: “Welcome back to power, Mikhail.”

Despite the new, ironic touches, Pravda has not completely turned its back on the Communists.

In a front-page letter to the newspaper’s 3.2 million readers, Gennady N. Seleznev, the new chief editor, said his staff’s first priority would be to “defend rank-and-file Communists from being purged for their convictions.”

“We will not die quietly,” Seleznev wrote. “We are reviving as an independent newspaper, which is known to the whole world.”

The newspaper did not hide the fact that it is going through financial difficulties. With its current bank accounts frozen by Yeltsin, the editorial staff opened two new accounts, a ruble account in Moscow and a foreign currency account in Italy.

“Today Pravda has practically no financial resources,” a front-page plea for contributions read. “In this critical situation for our newspaper, we appeal to you, our readers. From now on, whether or not Pravda will be issued depends on you personally.”

At the same time, the paper’s editors asked readers to be understanding about an increase in the newsstand price from 10 kopecks to 15 kopecks, or from about a third of a cent to half a cent at the official tourist exchange rate.

The paper also asked readers to telephone news tips to Pravda to help it become competitive with its liberal rivals.

“We will buy news!” read the headline on a message from the newspaper’s information department. “The new status of the newspaper means it has a new information concept. We intend to report to you any news interesting to the majority of readers, from UFOs to interviews with political leaders.”

Once the roaring voice of the totalitarian state, ordering people what to think, do and say, Pravda seemed to be whimpering on each of the six pages of its Saturday edition.

In every line, the newspaper seemed to be frantically groping for confirmation from its readers.

The chief editor’s assistant, Boris V. Zhuravlyov, reached in his office Saturday night, said that many readers had called to compliment the staff on the new Pravda, which seemed “more interesting and lively” than before.

Although the first issue tended to play down the newspaper’s connection with the Communist Party, whose activities in the country were banned by the national legislature Thursday, Pravda will still try to persuade the people that “communism is not a dirty word,” Zhuravlyov said.

“At last count there were 15 million Communists in our country, and we can’t just cast them off, because many of them are respectable, honest people,” Zhuravlyov continued in a voice that indicated he was trying to convince himself of what he was saying. “To discard the Soviet Communist Party would be wrong, too, because for decades it has been the primary stabilizing factor in our society.”