Soviet Union And Now for My Next Trick . . . By purging 74 "dead souls" from the Central Committee, Gorbachev once again proves a political magician without peer

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

More than once, Mikhail Gorbachev has shown himself to be the most dazzling of political magicians. So when word spread that the Communist Party Central Committee had been summoned last week for a special plenum to discuss "organizational questions," many Soviets wondered just what the General Secretary had up his sleeve this time. Gorbachev did not disappoint them. ) Without resorting to repression, arrest or personal vilification, he gracefully purged 74 full members of the 301-member Central Committee. Never before in Soviet history had such a large housecleaning been executed so painlessly.

The departing Old Guard, dubbed the "dead souls" in a reference to Nikolai Gogol's 19th century novel, read like a Who's Who from the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Included were a former President, a former Prime Minister, five marshals, six generals and a portfolio of onetime Politburo members. What's more, they had "requested" to resign in an extraordinary statement that expressed "unanimous support for the political course of our dear party." As Gorbachev explained to the plenum, "One generation of party members has naturally to replace another."

That modest assessment downplayed the significance of a leadership shuffle that considerably strengthened the Soviet leader's position in his struggle against the party's conservative wing. In theory, the Central Committee functions as the party's most authoritative ruling body in the period between Communist Party congresses. It has the formal power to vote out the ruling Politburo, but it can replenish its own ranks only when a congress is convened. With the next regular congress scheduled for 1991, the Soviet leader had to be content, for the moment, with promoting 24 junior members of the present body from candidate to voting members. Though the Central Committee was thus downsized by 50 members, to 251, reinforcements are on the way. Since the last congress, in 1986, Gorbachev has changed party leaders in six out of 15 republics and 88 out of 150 regional and territorial party chiefs.

The plenum was the first major meeting since the March elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies, which holds its inaugural session on May 25. The strong showing by reformist candidates gave Gorbachev the proof he needed to persuade skeptical party functionaries that the solution to the country's economic woes lies in accelerating reforms, not braking them. "The elections unequivocally said yes to perestroika," Gorbachev told the plenum. Added he: "We should have enough courage and ability to pursue consistently the line we have marked out under difficult conditions."

Speaking with the same bluntness heard at past party plenums, Gorbachev did not gloss over the country's continuing shortages in food and consumer goods, but he also contended that many Soviets had forgotten how to work and "had * got used to the fact that they are often paid just for coming to work." His harshest words were targeted at bumbling bureaucrats. Gorbachev told how one ministry had imported almost 30 million medical syringes without ensuring that there were needles to go with them.

Gorbachev asserted that many in the party were "not always keeping pace with life," adding, "This is also true of the Central Committee of the party and its Politburo." He compared some party leaders with commanders who are straggling in the trenches when their divisions are already on the attack. Said he: "Some have already gone so far as to say in effect that democracy and glasnost are very nearly a disaster. The fact that people . . . no longer want to remain silent and insist on making demands is viewed as taking perestroika too far. I for one, comrades, see this as a success of perestroika."

Gorbachev's feisty tone was matched by a barrage of frank criticism from the floor, which was later printed in full in the Soviet press. Yuri Solovyov, the Leningrad regional party boss who had lost his uncontested election race for the new legislature, charged that Kremlin initiatives like the antialcoholism campaign and the program to foster cooperative businesses had been carried out with "inconsistency, haste and insufficient thought." Of perestroika, Solovyov said, the "minuses still significantly exceed the pluses." Moscow Mayor Valeri Saikin, another election loser, questioned whether democracy had not come to mean "everything is permitted."

One of the harshest blasts came from Vladimir Melnikov, the party boss from the Komi region, in the northeastern part of the Russian Republic. He charged that today's problems could not simply be attributed to past leaders. "We are duty bound to admit that many mistakes and miscalculations have been made in the years of perestroika too." In fact, he wondered if the real truth were being kept from Gorbachev by aides who were "clearly guarding the General Secretary from the severity of the situation."

With a final round of elections set for May 14, there was evidence last week that some local functionaries had not got the message from the first round of votes. In one district of the Russian city of Pskov, the local electoral commission chose the regional party boss again as its uncontested candidate, despite the fact that he lost his first bid at the ballot box. The liberals could at least claim a triumph in the second round of elections at the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences. After weeks of debate, academy members finally voted Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov one of their 20 seats in the congress. Independent deputies and supporters of such unofficial groups as the popular front movements in the Baltic States have already gathered in Moscow to discuss forming a loose parliamentary bloc called the March Coalition. The group could attract as many as 10% of the members of the new Congress of People's Deputies, presenting Gorbachev with something akin to an organized opposition.

If the left may challenge the Soviet leader in the future, the conservatives are doing so right now, and Gorbachev showed last week that he could hold his own in the debate with them. In some ways, Gorbachev is the Teflon General Secretary, blaming others for the plodding progress of perestroika despite the fact that he has been in charge for more than four years. "Gorbachev's greatest strength may very well be his pragmatism," mused a Moscow intellectual. "He is not dogmatic about carrying out any set program. Instead, he maneuvers in and out of every situation like a clever fox." Nonetheless, with empty store shelves and seething ethnic tensions, many edgy Soviets are counting the days in hopes that the first session of the new congress will mark the point of no return on the path of reform.