An indignant Mikhail Gorbachev Thursday accused President Boris Yeltsin of exacting political revenge, after police sealed off the entrances to the building that houses his research institute, the Gorbachev Fund.


Police surrounded the large office complex on Leningradsky Prospekt early Thursday morning, only hours after Yeltsin issued an order to turn the property over to a new government Finance Academy.


Standing on the steps of the main building as police guarded the entrance behind him, the angry former Soviet leader told reporters that Yeltsin's move was an attempt to get even for Gorbachev's criticisms of the government.


"Yesterday I said that the president cannot cope with his job. But as you see, he has shown how he copes: He sealed off the building and locked out its employees, and all this has happened in a country its leaders call democratic", Gorbachev said, cutting the cold air with his once authoritative gestures.


Gorbachev was referring to an interview published Wednesday in Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which he sharply criticized Yeltsin for failing on reforms.


"This government does not want advice from anyone", he said. "This is Yeltsin's reply: We'll show that Gorbachev! "


Employees crowded the entrance in the morning as police refused to let them in. Only those on a list that police officers held were allowed to enter.


Gorbachev, who said he learned of the eviction only from television news, said that he was "ashamed for the Russian authorities, ashamed for Russia, and ashamed for all of us".


Facing reporters in the damp cold, the man who once ruled a superpower had the wronged and bitter air of an evicted tenant.


His longtime aide, Alexander Yakovlev, who is also the fund's vice president, arrived at the headquarters shortly before Gorbachev, denouncing the action as "lawlessness without bounds, like in 1917", referring to the Bolshevik Revolution.


Yeltsin's eviction notice came the same day that Gorbachev failed to appear for testimony before the Constitutional Court in a case that is to determine the legality of the president's decrees banning the Communist party. Gorbachev, 61, who served as the party's general secretary from 1985-91, has refused to appear, arguing that the trial is politically motivated.


His rivalry with Yeltsin, which dates back several years, has escalated in recent weeks, apparently because of the Constitutional Court case.


When he resigned last December, he agreed to refrain from criticizing the man who had defended him during the August coup. At the same time, Yeltsin and leaders of other former Soviet republics vowed to treat Gorbachev with the same respect and status afforded former statesmen in most countries, rather than persecuting him like Nikita Khrushchev, who died a disgraced pensioner after being ousted in 1964.


But as Gorbachev has become more vocal, most notably in the recent sparring over the Constitutional Court, that agreement has broken down.


When he criticized Yeltsin in an interview last summer, Yeltsin retaliated by confiscating his Zil limousine and replacing it with a black Volga sedan, the car given to rank-and-file bureaucrats. He was humiliated last week by being refused an exit visa for a trip to South Korea. He said on Thursday that he was still trying to find out who had issued the order, and that when he did, he would sue.


Gorbachev denied that he wanted to unseat Yeltsin, insisting that his criticisms were aimed at helping the government.


"I am trying to make them listen, he said.


Gorbachev set up his International Center for Social and Political Research shortly after he stepped down as Soviet president on Dec. 25, 1991. At the time, Yeltsin agreed to turn the spacious office complex, a former Communist Party institute, over to the new fund.


Breaking that agreement with this decree, Yeltsin ordered the fund to squeeze into 1, 000 square meters and to pay rent to the building's new tenants. Until Thursday, the fund occupied about 3, 500 square meters, according to an aide.


Gorbachev said that he planned to continue his work at the fund, and that he would seek new office space with the help of friends. Later on Thursday, he met with Anatoly Chubais, the head of the State Property Commitee.


A spokesman for Yeltsin, Alexander Orfyonov, denied that the fund's property had been seized for political reasons and said that the government had needed the office space to house its Finance Academy.