Monday, Apr. 30, 1990

World Notes SOVIET UNION

"Down with Gorbachev!" some 10,000 protesters shouted within earshot of the Kremlin. "Down with the KGB!" The demonstrators had gathered to support criminal investigators Telman Gdlyan and Nikolai Ivanov. The two became popular heroes last year after publicly accusing Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev of corruption; both were elected to parliament last spring. But now they are accused of illegally detaining witnesses and forcing confessions in a six-year probe of a multimillion-ruble scandal involving racketeering and influence peddling in Uzbekistan, which nailed the son-in-law of the late Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev, among others.

Last week a Supreme Soviet session agreed that Gdlyan and Ivanov had broken the law by arresting family members of suspected bribe takers. But the legislators stopped short of lifting their parliamentary immunity so that prosecutors could press charges against them. Noted former dissident Roy Medvedev, who headed a Supreme Soviet inquiry into the affair: "One thing is clear -- they have no evidence that Ligachev took bribes." The crowd outside the Kremlin, however, continued to call for Ligachev's resignation.