President Boris Yeltsin's plans for revamping state television seemed headed for trouble Tuesday, as the State Duma mobilized to block the move and the shape and nature of the intended company remained shrouded in secrecy and confusion.


Plans for the division of the state monolith Ostankino and the creation of Russian Public Television, or ORT, have been under tight public scrutiny since the new company's head, Vladislav Listyev, was slain by gunmen March 1.


On Tuesday, the lower house of parliament held hearings on the future of state television, during which a number of deputies and media experts railed against ORT and promised to vote to block its creation at Wednesday's plenary session.


"We have all grown used to the fact that everyone but the hopelessly lazy steals government property," thundered Sergei Kalashnikov, a deputy from the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. "But the executive branch has never before revealed so openly its criminal attempt to confiscate the wealth of the state."


Kalashnikov was joined in his attacks by a wide spectrum of Duma deputies. But amid all the heated rhetoric and pointed accusations, one clear impression emerged: No one really knows what is happening at Russian Public Television.


ORT was created by presidential decree on Nov. 29. It was set up as a joint stock company, giving 51 percent of the shares to the government, and farming out the other 49 percent to a consortium of private investors. If all goes according to plan, ORT will receive the sole rights to Channel One, the frequency used up until now by Ostankino Television, on April 1.


At that point Ostankino would lose all automatic rights to broadcast, and thus would be reduced to the status of a production company competing with other studios for a piece of the ORT pie


The goal of the proposed privatization, according to Igor Yakovenko, head of the Duma subcommittee on the media, was to relieve the government of the tremendous costs of financing Ostankino, and to raise the quality of programming.


"We can understand these goals," said Yakovenko, "although I do not believe they are the main ones. But we cannot agree with the methods with which this company was created."


The whole process was conducted in the deepest secrecy, according to Yakovenko. He said the 5,000-strong worker's collective at Ostankino was never consulted and employees were kept in the dark as to their future and the future of their company.


The all-important schedule of programming has still not been officially confirmed, leaving considerable doubt that ORT will be able to begin broadcasting on time. A new general director, Sergei Blagovolin, has just been appointed to replace Listyev.


The delay has been hard on the employees at Ostankino, many of whom will likely be deprived of their livelihood once the new company begins working.


"Those whose programs do not make it on the air will lose their jobs," the deputy director of Ostankino, Gennady Shchipitko, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We are witnessing the destruction of the nation's creative force."


The formation of ORT had attracted little public attention until the killing of Listyev. The popular journalist had been appointed general director of the new company, and speculation on the reasons for his assassination centered on his position at ORT, particularly his role in banning advertising from the new company.


The furor caused by Listyev's death has already caused some of ORT's shareholders to regret their involvement.


In particular, an association of three production companies that was slated to receive a 3 percent share in ORT declared that it was withdrawing."After Vlad was killed we decided not to meddle in financial and political intrigues," said Lidiya Cheryomushkina, executive director of ViD, one of the three companies, and the one that Listyev had headed before his appointment to ORT. "We realized that such games are not for us."


But the exact nature of those intrigues remains murky. The issues surrounding the creation of ORT have been obscured by a web of charges and countercharges.


ORT shareholders have labeled Ostankino outmoded and corrupt, reluctant to abandon its monopoly of the airwaves and its access to easy money.


Alexander Yakovlev, the chairman of the board of ORT who was forced out of his position as chairman of Ostankino last week by an angry collective, branded the Ostankino work force "a bunch of demagogues."


Ostankino officials have countered that ORT is a "conspiracy of bureaucrats" designed to give control of television to a small group of politicians in order to influence the outcome of the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for December this year and June 1996.


"ORT was conceived with one goal in mind -- the strengthening of the executive branch's control over politics," said Viktor Talanov, a deputy from the centrist Democratic Party of Russia. Channel One is the sole television station that broadcasts throughout Russia.


"Television is the most powerful of political instruments," said Alexei Podberyozkin, a media expert invited to speak at the Duma hearings. "And we have to look at whose hands this weapon is falling into."


Another point of contention is the considerable property that belongs to Ostankino and which has, effectively, been taken from the workers by presidential decree. According to the ORT charter, Ostankino will have a 9 percent share in the new company, but the considerable technical base that will be put at ORT's disposal is, in the opinion of many experts, worth much more. Duma deputies proposed to suspend the formation of ORT until the many complex questions surrounding it can be clarified. On Wednesday the deputies will also put to a vote the second reading of a law on privatizing the media, which aims to regulate the process through the legislature.


If adopted, that law would have to clear the Federation Council, and go to the president for signature or veto. This process is unlikely to be completed before ORT's scheduled launch date of April 1.