Soviet Culture Chief Fired; ‘Fresh Wind’ in Arts Seen

MOSCOW —  The Kremlin dismissed the culture minister today in a possible stirring of the “fresh wind” Soviet intellectuals and artists have hoped for under Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s leadership.

Removal of Pyotr N. Demichev, 68, who confined the arts within his conservative mold for 12 years, was announced at a session of the Supreme Soviet. He was given the largely ceremonial job of deputy to President Andrei A. Gromyko.

There also were indications of the ascendancy of Anatoly F. Dobrynin, who was brought home earlier this year after more than a quarter-century as ambassador to Washington.

Kuznetsov Retires at 85

Demichev, a deputy Politburo member since 1964, replaced Vasily V. Kuznetsov as first deputy president. Official announcements said Kuznetsov, the oldest man in the Soviet leadership at 85, retired for health reasons.

Gorbachev, 55, has made sweeping personnel changes in 15 months as Communist Party chief. His dismissal of Demichev, for whom no successor has been named, could open the way for more of the changes recently detected on the Soviet cultural scene.

Kuznetsov and another octogenarian, Boris N. Ponomarev, lost their deputy membership of the ruling Politburo when a new order of leadership was named at the end of the 27th party congress in March.

Aided Solzhenitsyn Exile

Demichev is perhaps best known in the West as the man who engineered the 1974 exile of dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

He was trained as an engineer and became a Communist Party ideologist. He rose rapidly under Nikita S. Khrushchev to top party posts in Moscow and flourished under Leonid I. Brezhnev, who put him in charge of a commission on ideology and chose him as culture minister in 1974.

He is said to have had little sympathy for the more liberal policies sought by Soviet artists and intellectuals.