Russian Security Chief Assails Agency Overhaul : Reforms: He says Yeltsin-mandated changes are demoralizing. Reshuffle includes 30% personnel cut.

The chief of Russia’s secret police has criticized a presidential order to transform his ministry, the former KGB, into a new counterintelligence agency, calling it demoralizing and potentially damaging to national security.

“You surely know the popular expression ‘If you want to weaken performance, start a reorganization.’ In this case, that is what’s happening,” said Nikolai M. Golushko, the man put in charge of the abrupt task by President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Golushko said his Security Ministry was ordered to drop at least 30% of its agents in the year-end reshuffle. “I do not denounce the president; I obey him,” he said. “But I am talking about the personal feelings of honest officers.”

The minister, a 30-year police veteran, made his remarks to reporters Monday and in an interview Tuesday with the newspaper Izvestia. Coupled with harsher criticism by other security officials, they underlined Yeltsin’s troubled relations with Russia’s armed services.

Yeltsin expressed concern last week that one-third of the army personnel who took part in Russia’s Dec. 12 parliamentary elections voted for Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the extreme right-wing nationalist whose party finished first with about 23% of the vote.

Many officers in the army and secret police blame Yeltsin for the collapse of Russia’s superpower status along with their own salaries and standing in society. The Security Ministry replaced the more powerful KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 but continued to be run by KGB veterans.

Yeltsin criticized the ministry for passivity last October during a two-day armed revolt by Communist and nationalist supporters of the former Parliament. The uprising was crushed by army units loyal to Yeltsin--after some wavering by the army command.

Last week Yeltsin dissolved the ministry, calling it an “unreformable” obstacle to his democratic agenda and “the last bulwark of the former totalitarian system.” He said the new Federal Counterintelligence Agency would stop “police surveillance of the people” and concentrate on foreign spies.

Russian security officials say they still worry about espionage, despite the end of the Cold War and the beginning of cooperation with the West.

In a recent interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Veniamin Kashirskikh, the Security Ministry’s counterintelligence chief, said Russia still needs to protect scientific, commercial and military secrets.

“Foreign intelligence services have expanded their work, and this does not allow us to relax,” he said, adding that even Russia’s neighbors in the former Soviet Union have sent spies here.

Some officers say their counterintelligence mission will be undermined by Yeltsin’s effort to abolish the time-honored police practice of political surveillance at home. A more cynical view is that Yeltsin wants such spying turned against his enemies under a new agency more tightly in his control.

In fact, Yeltsin’s directive strips the secret police of its status as a Cabinet ministry and places it directly under the president. That will insulate it from pressure by the new Parliament, which, like the last one, is dominated by forces hostile to or critical of Yeltsin.

Leonid V. Shebarshin, a former KGB intelligence chief, said Monday that the lack of parliamentary oversight will make it easier for Yeltsin to use the new agency against his domestic foes.

“The key reason why he dissolved the ministry lies in the fact that an overwhelming majority of its personnel are loyal to the law and not to political personalities,” he told the newspaper Trud.

That view was backed by a lieutenant colonel in the Security Ministry, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity.

“Unreformable? What is Yeltsin talking about?” he said. “A great majority of people working here are in our 30s and 40s. We work within a concrete framework of orders and regulations. OK, you gave us a law, so change it; make new rules.”

The officer said the shake-up will accelerate the movement of the best agents into higher-paying jobs in Russia’s growing private sector.

Another officer, quoted by Izvestia but not named, said Yeltsin’s decree “is pushing us into the embrace of Zhirinovsky,” who promised during the campaign to restore Russia as a superpower.

“If I am fired, I will offer my services to the Zhirinovsky party,” the agent said. “He gives us hope that, if he comes to power, the state will treat people in our profession with more respect.”

Moscow Bureau reporter Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.