Viktor V. Grishin; Leader of Communist Party in Moscow

Viktor V. Grishin, who headed the Communist Party in Moscow for nearly two decades and was among Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s main rivals, has died of a heart attack, Moskovskaya Pravda reported Tuesday. He was 77.

Grishin died Monday at a welfare office in Moscow, where he had come to register for an increase in his state pension, the Moscow newspaper said.

Grishin was a member of the ruling Politburo for a quarter of a century, and as head of the municipal Communist Party organization was Moscow mayor from 1967 to 1985.

When Gorbachev became head of the Communist Party in 1985, one of his first moves was to remove Grishin as Moscow’s party boss. Boris Yeltsin took over the post.

During Leonid I. Brezhnev’s long period as the country’s leader, some Western experts speculated that Grishin would be his successor.

But after Brezhnev’s death in 1982, Grishin lost a power struggle with Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB, who launched an anti-corruption drive with Gorbachev’s help.

The son of a railway worker, Grishin was an ethnic Russian from the city of Serpukhov, 60 miles south of Moscow. He worked as a railroad engineer in Serpukhov in the 1930s, before beginning a full-time career with the party.

He was named to the party’s Central Committee in 1952, and became a candidate, or non-voting, member of the Politburo in 1961.

He was elected a full member of the Politburo in 1971 and remained in that elite circle until early 1986, after Gorbachev ousted him as first secretary.