2 Top Soviet Party Aides May Be Purged

MOSCOW â€”  In yet another political dispute over the speed of carrying out Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of perestroika , Kremlin leaders appear to have targeted top Communist Party officials in the Ukraine and Armenia for a possible purge.

The showdown in what is becoming open political warfare may come in June, when Gorbachev convenes a party conference. He reportedly will attempt to purge his opponents from the 300-member Central Committee and other important posts.

The ruling Politburo has sharply criticized the party hierarchy in Kiev, the home base of Ukrainian party chief Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky, who is also a member of the Politburo. In reporting the criticism Friday, the authoritative party newspaper Pravda did not say whether he had attended this week’s session at which the criticism was heard.

The main charge against the Kiev party chiefs was that they had been negligent in carrying out perestroika , the restructuring of economic and social life advocated by Gorbachev.

Shcherbitsky, 69, came to power in 1972, when a close associate, Leonid I. Brezhnev, was the national leader. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader from 1964 until his death in 1980, now is blamed for the economic stagnation that Gorbachev seeks to cure with perestroika. For nearly three years Shcherbitsky has successfully resisted attempts by the Gorbachev forces to drive him from office.

Not long ago Shcherbitsky struck out at Fedor T. Morgun, a proponent of perestroika in the Ukraine and the party first secretary in the Poltava region. Morgun, who has become almost an open rival for Shcherbitsky’s seat, was criticized by the Ukrainian Politburo on Dec. 27. It said that his political and organizational work had suffered because he had become too closely involved in economic affairs.

Now Moscow has put the spotlight of publicity on Morgun by arranging trips to his region for the Soviet and foreign press, and by inviting him to conduct a news conference here after a recent plenum of the Central Committee of the national party.

In Armenia, which, like the Ukraine, is among the 15 republics that make up the Soviet Union, criticism has been focused on Karen S. Demirchyan, who became party chief there in 1974, at the age of 42. He has been accused of tolerating corruption, of being inefficient and of resisting Gorbachev’s reform plans.

At a recent plenum of the Armenian Communist Party, a senior official reportedly suggested that Demirchyan resign from his post and take some of his associates with him. Ordinarily, such a suggestion would be made only with the strong backing of central party authorities.

But Demirchyan fought back, according to a report in the government newspaper Izvestia: He organized a meeting that “turned into a show of personal support� for his leadership.

“The negative phenomena in Armenia still rely on powerful roots, and their liquidation simply cannot be postponed any longer,� Izvestia commented.