President Boris Yeltsin seized the property of the Gorbachev Foundation on Wednesday, sharply intensifying what has become a significant power struggle between the two most recent occupiers of the Kremlin.


In a decree issued late in the day, Yeltsin turned the headquarters of the Gorbachev Foundation, the former leader's research institute located at 49-55 Leningradsky Prospekt, over to the government's Finance Academy, according to Interfax.


Also transferred was a dacha settlement in the suburb of Novoye Nagornoye, a former Communist Party complex that the foundation used to house visiting delegations.


The decree instructed the new academy, which will "train personnel for Russia's financial and banking systems", to leave up to 1, 000 square meters to the Gorbachev Foundation and to draw up a lease, Interfax said.


The move was the latest in a political chess game that has seen Gorbachev rebuff repeated attempts by the Yeltsin administration to force him to appear before the Constitutional Court to testify in the Communist Party trial.


Gorbachev, who contends that the proceedings are political, has been banned from travelling abroad since the weekend. With the ban has come an escalation of his rhetoric against the government.


In his latest salvo, in an interview published in Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday, Gorbachev said that Yeltsin and his team were failing to cope any better than he had during his six years as Soviet leader.


"The new democrats, generally speaking, have shown that they have managed no better", he said. "The president is clearly not coping with his duties, he is not coping. I do not want him to lose, but he is losing".


This barrage is apparently what inspired Yeltsin's latest action against the man he replaced in the Kremlin last December.


Although international response to the travel ban imposed on Gorbachev has been muted, the seizure of the foundation of an elder statesman and Nobel Peace laureate is bound to set off an outcry.


But it is hardly the first time that One or the other of the rivals has defied international opinion to settle scores.


Their rivalry dates back to 1987, when Gorbachev, then Communist Party leader, removed Yeltsin as Moscow party chief, the post in which he first gained popularity as a new-style leader willing to descend from the upper spheres and listen to people.


Yeltsin was removed from the Politburo after criticizing a speech Gorbachev was to deliver on the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.


But with the political forces set off by Gorbachev's openness policies, Yeltsin slowly climbed his way back to the top. He was elected to Russia's top post in June 1991 and, with the breakup of the Soviet empire in December, became the supreme leader, supplanting Gorbachev.


At the time, Gorbachev agreed to refrain from criticizing the man who had defended him during the August coup. But the Constitutional Court case has put an end to that agreement.


At issue is the legality of Yeltsin's ban of Communist Party activities after the coup. Gorbachev, as the party's last general secretary, has been asked to testify before Russia's highest court.


His reply is that only history can judge and that he will not be a party to these proceedings.


Last Friday, the court asked the Security Ministry, the successor to the KGB, and the Foreign Ministry to withhold Gorbachev's passport in reprisal for his nonappearance. He had to cancel a trip to South Korea this week as a result.


Gorbachev was served Monday with a second summons to testify on Wednesday. He again defied the court.