Gorbachev's alma mater produces key officials

Mikhail Gorbachev has acquired one new aide, while another personal assistant has moved over to take charge of one of the Central Committee's most sensitive jobs, committee sources have said. The changes appear to underline Mr. Gorbachev's firm control of the Communist Party's central apparatus.

Ivan Frolov, formerly editor of the main theoretical journal, Kommunist, has become Gorbachev's aide for ideological matters, the sources said Friday. And Valery Boldin, a Gorbachev aide who worked largely on domestic issues, has become head of the committee's General Department.

Despite its vague sounding name, the General Department is charged with the sensitive task of handling all documents that pass through the country's ruling Politburo.

Like a number of other senior officials, Mr. Frolov was a contemporary of Gorbachev at Moscow State University.

A philospher by training, Frolov rose to prominence after the March 1986 Party Congress, where he was elected to full Central Committee membership. Immediately after this he was put in charge of Kommunist.

Several other contemporaries of Gorbachev were given influential positions around the same time. The most prominent is Anatoly Lukyanov, who studied law at the same time as Gorbachev. Elected to Central Committee in '86, in January he was made a secretary of the committee - one of 11 senior officials who handle day-to-day business for the top party leaders between Politburo sessions.

In this post, Mr. Lukyanov is reportedly playing a major role in legal reform. Until last week, he headed the General Department.

Among other Gorbachev contemporaries at university are Valentin Chikin and Lev Spiridonov. At the March 1986 congress, both became candidate members of the Central Committee.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Chikin assumed the editorship of the influential newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya and Mr. Spiridonov became a deputy editor of the main party newspaper Pravda.

Frolov will find himself working closely with Anatoly Chernayev, Gorbachev's foreign policy adviser. A fellow alumnus, Mr. Chernayev graduated from Moscow State in 1947 and was a lecturer there when Gorbachev was a student.

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