MOSCOW--Mikhail Gorbachev pulled off a major shake-up of the Communist Party Politburo yesterday, retiring a quarter of the ruling elite in one stroke and promoting his KGB chief and his top economic planner.

Dropped from power was the Ukrainian party chief, Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky, 71; former KGB chief Viktor M. Chebrikov, 66; and Viktor P. Nikonov, 60. Only one pre-Gorbachev appointee is left on the 11 member Politburo.

Promoted were KGB Gen. Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, who presided over a partial opening up of his secrecy bound agency, and economic planning chief Yuri D. Maslyukov.

The moves demonstrated Gorbachev's firm control at the pinnacle of Soviet power at a time when economic failures and ethnic violence prompted some Soviets to fret openly about the possibility of a coup or civil war. Gorbachev is both the nation's president and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

The shake-up came after the party Central Committee yesterday approved a program directing restive Soviet republics to stifle calls to leave the union but acceding to demands for more local control of the economy.

The Central Committee also gave Gorbachev an early chance to reach deep down in the party for new faces by moving up the next party congress to October 1990.

Gorbachev forced the retirement of a quarter of the Central Committee at the last meeting of that policy making body in April. Almost a year ago, two long-time apparatchiks, including then-President Andrei A. Gromyko, were removed from the Politburo.

Scherbitsky, regarded as a conservative force both in Moscow and his native Ukraine, was the last Politburo member serving from the time of President Leonid I. Brezhnev. His retirement leaves Vitaly I. Vorotnikov of the Russian republic as the only pre-Gorbachev appointee on the 11 man Politburo.

Shcherbitsky long has been rumored to be in trouble with Gorbachev. He presumably will remain party chief in the Ukraine until a meeting there can be called to name a replacement.

Retiring in Good Grace

Gorbachev continued to fill the ruling body with his own men, elevating the new KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, and the head of economic planning, Yuri Maslyukov, to full membership.

Tass said Gorbachev thanked the three Politburo members warmly for their "many years of fruitful activity" in the party, indicating they were retiring in good grace.

Two non-voting members of the Politburo, Yuri Solovyev and Nikolai Talyzin, also retired. Their places were taken by Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Soviet of the Union legislative chamber, and Boris Pugo, head of the party commission overseeing discipline.

Solovyev was embarrassed in March when he was rejected in an election for the new Congress of People's Deputies parliament even though he ran unopposed. He subsequently was removed as Leningrad party chief.

Chebrikov had moved from KGB chief last September to a new party position overseeing legal affairs. Nikonov had described himself this year as a deputy to Yegor K. Ligachev on party agricultural policy, and appeared to serve no clear function on the Politburo.