He ran the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a leading Soviet research institute, before becoming a Politburo member and Gorbachev aide.

Soviet editors who have proposed stories about Mr. Gorbachev, his background and his family have been turned away by Gorbachev aides.

"He wants to see the city because it is the financial center of the capitalist world," one Gorbachev aide said.

"I think if Ligachev is elected, there will be a collapse," said Georgi K. Shakhnazarov, a Gorbachev aide, in an interview before the voting.

"He hopes to give the whole process a new impulse," a Gorbachev aide said.

A Gorbachev aide said the President might bypass the Congress and create the new enforcement service by decree.

One Gorbachev aide recently described an effort to dislodge a regional party leader.

One of the principal authors of the press law is Georgi K. Shakhnazarov, a top Gorbachev aide and chairman of a key parliamentary subcommittee.

It remains a question whether Mr. Gorbachev, after his ordeal, will bolt the party he heads, as have Mr. Yeltsin and other former Gorbachev aides.

Soviet officials, including Gorbachev aides, suggested today that the West was misreading the Yeltsin case and making too much of it.