
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 13, 1990                   TAG: 9007130150
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Short

YELTSIN QUITS PARTY

Boris Yeltsin, president of the vast Russian republic, resigned from the Communist Party on Thursday, triggering a split in the once-monolithic organization that has ruled the Soviet Union more than 70 years.

Shortly after Yeltsin made a theatrical walkout from the landmark Communist Party Congress, several leaders of the radical Democratic Platform faction said they also would leave. They said they would launch a rival party and convene a fall congress of "democratic forces" opposed to Communist rule.

The walkout by Yeltsin and others is likely to reshape the Soviet political scene, making possible an effective opposition for the first time in Soviet history.

Thursday's dramatic developments overshadowed what is likely to be the biggest shakeup in the party's leadership since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. Almost half the ruling Politburo's members have been dropped from the list of candidates for the Central Committee, which sets party policy.

Gorbachev, who brought Yeltsin to Moscow soon after he became Soviet leader, showed no emotion as his former protege announced his break. "That ends the process logically," he commented, referring to Yeltsin's 2 1/2-year transformation from Communist Party apparatchik to populist hero.

Yeltsin and Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis are now the only non-Communists to lead any of the Soviet Union's 15 republics.

by CNB