Yeltsin Warns Gorbachev He May Be Muzzled

In a sharp response to former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s criticisms of the Russian leadership, President Boris N. Yeltsin on Tuesday accused the old Kremlin chief of triggering tensions and threatened to take steps to prevent such attacks in the future.

“A sense of responsibility before the country and the Russian people forces the Russian president to draw Gorbachev’s attention to the danger and inadmissibility of such statements,” Yeltsin’s spokesman, Vyacheslav V. Kostikov, said in a written statement. “In order to preserve stability in the country and the political course chosen by the people, Boris Yeltsin will have to take the necessary and lawful steps in order that reforms are not hampered.”

Although the statement did not specify what measures would be used to silence Gorbachev, the implied threat represented an escalation in the longtime feud between Yeltsin, Russia’s first popularly elected president, and Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last Communist Party chief.

Yeltsin’s office distributed the warning to Gorbachev just four days after the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an interview with Gorbachev in which he accused Yeltsin of leading the country to ruin.

Gorbachev reacted swiftly to Yeltsin’s remarks Tuesday.

“This statement once again confirms the correctness of my criticisms,” his spokesman, Alexander A. Likhotal, quoted him as saying.

In the newspaper interview, Gorbachev had accused Yeltsin’s team of having “authoritarian tendencies.” He said the team is capable only of destroying and not of creating anything new.

Gorbachev also said he will continue to play a role in the politics of his homeland in the post-Soviet era, although he said it is clear to him that Yeltsin wants him to “shut up.”

In the written response, Yeltsin’s spokesman accused Gorbachev of “going beyond his competence” and chastised him for criticizing the current economic policies, when he was the one who ruled the Soviet Union as it sank into economic chaos.

“Statements by Gorbachev, who failed to muster the courage to begin economic reforms during his six years in power, sound like instructions to the government and the president, who are taking real steps to reform the state,” the spokesman said in the statement.

The spokesman said Gorbachev’s gloom-filled forecasts and reckless accusations exacerbate political and economic instability in the country and impede Yeltsin’s reforms.

In his recent critiques of Yeltsin’s reforms, Gorbachev has appeared to all but gloat over his rival’s failure to turn around the economy. With prices soaring, production plunging and squabbles between the president and the Parliament stalling key reforms, it was easy for Gorbachev to find ammunition to use against Yeltsin.

Yeltsin, in turn, has accused Gorbachev of failing to abide by his promise, made when he resigned Dec. 25, to stay out of politics and give Yeltsin a chance to pursue policies without interference.