Soviets Accused of Funding Terrorism Until ’91 : Expose: Russian officials decry past Communist activities. Statements could damage Gorbachev’s reputation.

New statements by top Russian officials Friday appear to show that the Soviet Communist Party continued to supply funds and arms to terrorists until as recently as last year, even though then-President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the party’s leader, had long espoused a policy of cooperation with the West.

“These groups, for example, were ready to demolish pipelines or kill American businessmen or British or others . . . and (the Communist Party leaders) supplied them with rifles, guns, hand grenades, submachine guns, etc.,” Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin told a news conference called by a special commission assigned to declassify documents in the archives of the old Soviet government and the Communist Party.

Friday’s statements amplified a declaration early last week by Sergei M. Shakhrai, an adviser to President Boris N. Yeltsin, that the old Soviet Union bankrolled terrorism on a wide scale.

The statements, based on secret state and party documents that are scheduled to be made public beginning June 12, threaten to damage the reputation of Gorbachev, who was hailed throughout the West for ending the Cold War and decorated with a Nobel Peace Prize.

Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party until it was outlawed after the hard-line coup attempt in Moscow last August, has avoided journalists’ questions about the alleged crimes of the Communist Party. But on Friday, a spokesman for Gorbachev dismissed the latest declarations as part of a campaign by Yeltsin and his team to disgrace the former Kremlin chief.

“I think it’s simply immoral to try to put the blame and responsibility on Gorbachev for 70 years of vicious practices, forgetting that he was the one who put an end to all those practices,” said Alexander A. Likhotal, spokesman for the Gorbachev Foundation. “How can we reproach Gorbachev for having signed some party documents in the final phase of the (Communist) Party’s . . . influence, considering that it was Gorbachev who put an end to its influence?”

Rudolf Pikhoyev, deputy chairman of the special archives commission, said that he has seen documents proving that the authors of what used to be “new political thinking”--men who included only Gorbachev and a couple of his close allies in the old Politburo--supported terrorists. “New political thinking” was a phrase used to describe Gorbachev’s foreign policy.

“The block of documents relating to the authors of ‘new political thinking’ give a horrifying impression,” Pikhoyev told a news conference.

While broadly proclaiming their commitment to end tensions between the Soviet Union and Western countries, Pikhoyev said, they were simultaneously “financing all kinds of (overseas) organizations--including terrorists.”

Poltoranin, who is also minister of information and the head of the commission looking into the archives, stressed: “The latest dates on these documents are 1991. The assistance mainly took the form of money, weapons, special supplies.”

The officials refused to give details about specific groups that were given funds and about the areas of the world where these groups conducted terrorist activities, but they said that journalists will have access to the first batch of formerly secret documents when the archives are opened June 12.

The officials speaking Friday did not say directly that Gorbachev, who was the Communist Party’s general secretary from 1985 to 1991, knew that the party was sponsoring terrorists, although they implied as much.

However, Poltoranin said that the commission had found a document signed by Gorbachev that declares that the pro-democracy Inter-regional Deputies Group of the former Soviet Parliament should not be “given the right” to issue its own publications. If true, this flagrantly contradicted his policy of glasnost , or openness.

The officials also cited decisions of the Communist Party’s Politburo to send many millions of dollars abroad to support Communist parties in 70 countries--including the United States and Israel--until as late as 1990, when the economy was already in dire straits.

“The people who were in power in our country had enough time to squander all our gold by giving it away to coup plotters and terrorists, throw it away across the world to fuel the ‘world (Communist) revolution’ and left nothing for the country,” Poltoranin said.

Hard-liners who want to bring the Soviet Union back to life see the disclosures about the archives as part of an attempt by Yeltsin’s government to distract citizens from its own failings by flooding the press and other media with news of the sins of the old regime.

Yeltsin’s team stepped up attacks on Gorbachev after the former president last week accused the current government of leading Russia to ruin. Early this week, a spokesman for Yeltsin warned Gorbachev to keep his comments to himself or face retribution.

On Friday, Yeltsin’s government replaced the Zil limousine assigned for Gorbachev’s use with a Volga sedan. But the attempt to imply a connection between Gorbachev and terrorist organizations was the most damning assault yet.

“I would say that this country has a longstanding tradition of slighting its Nobel laureates--beginning with (novelist Boris) Pasternak, then (dissident physicist Andrei D.) Sakharov and now Gorbachev,” said Likhotal, who was also Gorbachev’s spokesman when he was president. “This should be stopped somehow because it really looks ugly--beginning with such petty piques as taking away a car and ending up with these accusations to discredit him.”