Pravda’s Presses Run Again After Yeltsin Crackdown : Russia: The opposition newspaper, shut down for a month, takes on the president in first issue.

Pravda, the 81-year-old newspaper that was long the mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party, began publishing again Tuesday, 30 days after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin shut it down.

The newspaper once ridiculed as the world’s most boring broadsheet chugged back to life swinging at the Yeltsin regime.

The four-page renaissance issue accuses Yeltsin forces of provoking Moscow’s Oct. 3 riot to give themselves a pretext for attacking the White House. It declares the elections to be held in five weeks illegitimate and unconstitutional--although it urges voters not to boycott the polls lest Russia wind up with a new Parliament but with no lawmakers “dedicated to defending the interests of the working man.”

And, in an ideological about-face unthinkable five years ago, Pravda’s lead story reports approvingly on a letter from the Washington-based human rights group Helsinki Watch criticizing the Russian government’s crackdown on the media.

Although censorship was lifted Oct. 18, at least 16 newspapers remain shut, as does the rabidly anti-Yeltsin television program “600 Seconds.”

Pravda was permitted to resume publication only after sacking its editor-in-chief. But it succeeded in bucking government demands to change its name, which means “truth” in Russian. After decades of slavish service to the ruling party, Pravda now finds itself the only opposition media outlet functioning in Russia.

“There is no free press in the true sense of the word, because now the government can close or open up papers at . . . will,” Pravda’s new editor, Viktor A. Linnik, said in a television interview Tuesday.

Despite a new order by Yeltsin requiring unbiased television coverage of the election campaign, many Russians--including some journalists--are skeptical that election coverage on state-controlled airways will be fair.

Vera Kuznetsova, a columnist for the independent newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said Tuesday that government financing of print and television outlets ensures a docile media.

“Only those who extol the authorities and their merits get money,” Kuznetsova said. “When 80% of journalists are either corrupt or afraid, fairness and objectivity on the forthcoming election is simply out of the question.”

Alexander Lyubimov, a former anchor of the popular TV program “Vzglad” who was pulled off the air after his coverage of the Oct. 3 riot displeased authorities, complained Tuesday about pro-government bias at the Ostankino television network.

At the other major television network, Russian Television, respected commentator Nikolai K. Svanidze said he feels no ideological pressure. But he noted that only pro-Yeltsin journalists like him were hired to work at the newly formed network.

Few mainstream Russian journalists sympathize with the shuttered opposition newspapers, most of which are Communist, ultranationalist or anti-Semitic. To many, Russia’s newly won freedoms seem too fragile to survive attacks by organized extremists who do not play by democratic rules.

If some of the banned papers were clearly incendiary--such as the newspaper titled Grab an Ax--the publication called More is by the government’s own declaration simply a smutty tabloid.

More was in no way involved in the political violence in early October, but it was openly trying to undermine the morality of its readers, the Press and Information Ministry said in a recent statement defending the shutdown.

The statement said international civil rights conventions call for prohibitions against speech that advocates racism, religious hatred and violence.

In the rocky two years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pravda’s editors have not abandoned their Communist principles, but they have learned a thing or two about press freedom and market economics.

Pravda was closed for several weeks after the failure of the hard-line coup of 1991, when the Communist Party was stripped of its property.

Then a controversial Greek enterprise bought a 55% share of the paper. The deal is now unpopular with Pravda employees not because their owners are capitalists but because the Greeks are not providing as much money as the paper needs, said Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander A. Ilyin.

Circulation has plummeted from a peak of 13 million to 500,000 before the latest shutdown, and editors fear that the monthlong closure only made their financial plight worse.