TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/082189/08218900.024

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 19KB | 329 lines

WORLD, Page 28

SOVIET UNION

Cry Independence

Pushing for sovereignty, the Baltics shape the future of

perestroika

By John Kohan/TALLINN


    Sitting in his spacious, wood-paneled office in the Estonian
capital of Tallinn, Communist Party leader Vaino Valjas, 58, wryly
sums up the situation in his tiny Baltic republic with a peasant
proverb: Better to see once than to hear a hundred times. The
former Soviet Ambassador to Nicaragua was called home only a year
ago to take up his new post, but what Valjas has already witnessed
in those tumultuous twelve months is nothing less than a
revolution, from the birth of unofficial political movements like
the Estonian Popular Front to the bruising constitutional crisis
with Moscow over the republic's sovereignty. "For years we have
gotten used to speaking of the party's monopoly on power," he says.
"We have forgotten the principle that the party has power only as
long as the people trust it."

    Valjas represents the new breed of Communist reformers who are
taking power in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and
Latvia. He and his colleagues know that the party's prospects in
the three Baltic states hinge on how quickly it can come to terms
with growing popular demands for more radical political and
economic change -- even if the party runs the risk of angering
Moscow. So far, the Baltic challenge has not erupted in ethnic
violence and social anarchy; instead, it has been subtly expressed
in arcane legal debate and parliamentary procedure. For President
Mikhail Gorbachev, it represents both a bold affirmation of his
goal of creating a society governed by law and an assault against
the national union he has vowed to protect. How he responds could
determine the future of perestroika.

    The nationalist drift in the Baltics has aroused fear among
the region's sizable Russian minority. When the Estonian supreme
soviet voted last week to impose a two-year residency requirement
for voters in local elections, supporters of the pro-Russian
Intermovement and Joint Council of Work Collectives denounced the
measures, charging that they consigned recent Russian immigrants
to a political "pale of settlement." At least 10,000 workers joined
strikes at some 30 enterprises. Since most of the affected plants
are under the control of Moscow ministries, many Estonians viewed
the labor unrest as another in a series of provocations from
conservative forces opposed to the Estonian campaign for local
sovereignty.

    It is a measure of how quickly political change has been
sweeping through the Baltic republics that the debate about
national self-determination has moved from the streets into
Communist Party headquarters. Asked about the future, Valjas
replies, "Our ideal is an independent, sovereign Estonia within the
Soviet Union or within a federation of sovereign republics."
Latvian Ideology Secretary Ivars Kezbers muses about being a "free
republic in a free Soviet Union." Lithuanian Second Secretary
Vladimir Berezov says that "our common goal is independence, even
if the ways of getting there are different."

    The paradox is that Gorbachev's campaign for economic reforms
and political liberalization has drawn a more enthusiastic response
from the three Baltic republics than from almost anywhere else in
the country. The emergence of independent splinter groups like the
Lithuanian Party of Democrats, the Estonian Christian Union and
the Latvian National Independence Movement has already created
something approximating a multiparty system in the Baltics. The
Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian delegations to the new Congress
of the People's Deputies have proved to be the star pupils of the
Gorbachev School of Democracy. The Estonians noted how one young
Central Asian deputy from Kirgizia, sitting across the aisle, began
to vote along with them -- until he was shifted to the opposite
side of his delegation.

    If most of the country is moving at a snail's pace in carrying
out perestroika, the relatively more prosperous Baltic states have
been pressing the Kremlin to go further with economic reforms.
Moscow officials have opposed the idea of independent national
currencies, but that has not stopped the three republics from
drafting plans to reduce the flood of Soviets who come from the
rest of the country to buy scarce goods in better-supplied Baltic
shops. The Estonians discuss establishing their own credit-card
system, and the Latvians talk about creating an alternative
currency as early as next January. It would be paid to local
workers and redeemable in special stores. Last month the Supreme
Soviet finally gave Estonia and Lithuania the green light to try
running their economies free of interference from central
ministries in Moscow. If these experiments prove successful, the
three Baltic states could serve as the economic locomotive
Gorbachev badly needs to pull the country's other twelve republics
toward perestroika.

    Of course, such a scenario would derail if the Baltic republics
decided instead to uncouple totally from the Soviet train. Emotions
are running particularly high this month because of the 50th
anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the treaty signed by
the Foreign Ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that
opened the way for Moscow's occupation of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania in 1940. In downtown Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania,
a group of young hunger strikers has set up a makeshift shelter
decorated with placards calling for liquidation of the Nazi-Soviet
pact. HOW LONG WILL THE RED ARMY BE MASTER OF OUR LAND, declares
a poster with a blood-red footprint on a map of the republic. On
Aug. 23, the date of the agreement, popular-front groups hope to
organize a human chain from Estonia to Lithuania, a sort of Hands
Across the Baltics.

    Valentin Falin, head of the Central Committee's international
department, conceded last month what Moscow has long denied: that
the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a secret protocol that called
for the Soviet takeover of the Baltics. But Baltic deputies serving
on a commission to study the pact complain that Moscow
representatives want to stop short of drawing the necessary
conclusions about the legal standing of their republics in the
union. Says Estonian Popular Front leader Rein Veidemann: "We must
solve the Baltic question and recognize the fact that we were first
occupied and then annexed." But what would belated recognition of
that historical reality actually accomplish?  "Nothing," says
Latvian Ideology Secretary Kezbers flatly. "The marriage between
the Soviet Union and the Baltic states is de facto if not de jure.
It is part of the existing order of postwar Europe."

    Still, the Baltic states hope at least to cut a better deal
with Moscow, perhaps in a new treaty that guarantees their
sovereign rights. During five decades of Soviet rule, the three
republics have watched helplessly as all-powerful ministries in
Moscow imposed new industries, regardless of whether they were
appropriate to the region. As a result, stretches of white sand
beaches along the Baltic coast became too polluted for swimming.
An influx of outside manpower threatened to make Latvians a
minority in their own homeland. The hardworking Estonians learned
to their amazement that by Gorbachev's reckoning, they were
supposed to be running a yearly deficit of 500 million rubles in
the Soviet Union's federal budget.

    The Baltic states also demand more say in military affairs.
The Estonian government has petitioned Moscow to put more Estonians
in the republic's interior-ministry forces and border guards. There
have been calls to restore the tradition of local military units
like the Sixteenth Lithuanian Rifle Division, and more radical
proposals to create a zone of peace in the Baltics. Says Latvian
Popular Front leader Dainis Ivans: "We should decide ourselves how
many military bases we need on our territory and move step by step
toward making Latvia a military-free zone."

    The anger accumulated over decades has blossomed into a rainbow
of national colors, a sign that whatever their unity of aims, each
state still proudly clings to its own national traditions. In
Estonia the once banned blue-black-and-white flag from the period
of independence between the two World Wars waves again above
Tallinn's Toompea Castle. Latvia has hoisted its traditional
crimson-and-white banner above Riga Castle. In Lithuania the
historic yellow-green-and-red tricolor flutters once more from
Gediminas Tower in Vilnius. A report from each of the Baltic
republics:

    ESTONIA

    As a popular saying in this northern Baltic state puts it:
Think nine times and speak on the tenth. Estonia's major
contribution to the Baltic reform movement has primarily been new
ideas, whether blueprints for popular-front movements or drafts of
laws regulating economic "cost accounting" at the local level. But
when Estonians do speak, they get a hearing. Last November the
Estonian supreme soviet passed amendments to the local
constitution, investing ultimate legal authority with the republic
rather than with Moscow. That act of defiance brought on a
finger-wagging lecture from Gorbachev. But the tiny Baltic state
held its ground, and Moscow pursued the matter no further. Says
party chief Valjas: "Estonian persistence has brought results."

    Valjas has astutely chosen compromise rather than confrontation
with the powerful Estonian Popular Front. He has even turned over
the key state-planning portfolio to economist Edgar Savisaar, a
member of the movement's executive council. During elections last
March, the Popular Front did not run its own candidates against
party regulars. Valjas garnered 90% of the votes in his district,
but a poll for a Finnish newspaper taken just after the balloting
showed that if true multiparty elections had been held, the
Communists would have placed a distant second to the Estonian
Popular Front (16.3% to 35.2%).

    The same questionnaire revealed that when ethnic Estonians were
asked about the future of the republic, 55% opted for complete
independence. A coalition of small nationalist groups has launched
a campaign to register those who lived in Estonia during its years
of independence (1918 to 1940) and their descendants in order to
convene an Estonian National Congress to discuss the fate of the
nation. Organizers deny that they are creating a rival
parliamentary body, but the fact that some 100,000 people have
responded has caused concern within the ranks of the party and the
Popular Front, and deepened the mistrust of the Russian minority.

    The Estonian leadership has come under virulent attack from
militant Russians for promoting legislation that gives priority to
the language and culture of ethnic Estonians. Gorbachev may have
taken a conciliatory approach with the nation's striking miners,
but the authorities in Tallinn signaled last week that they were
growing impatient with Russian agitators who have been using labor
protests to press their demands. The authorities invoked a
resolution recently passed by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to ban
the strike and issued a call for "common sense." As Popular Front
leader Veidemann notes, "Our greatest danger lies in creating two
separate societies, as in Northern Ireland and Lebanon."

    LATVIA

    The other Baltic states jest that being Latvian is "not a
nationality but a profession," a reflection of the peculiar
position of an ethnic group whose cultural survival has long been
threatened. In 1935 Latvians made up 76% of the population in their
homeland. By 1979 their numbers had dwindled to 53.7%. During the
same period, the total of ethnic Russians in Latvia climbed from
11% to 32.8%. Thus, Latvian national aims have to be advanced
through the art of compromise. At a time when Lithuanian and
Estonian parliamentarians were debating whether to turn down
Moscow's election-reform laws last November, the Latvians, led by
President Anatoli Gorbunov, veered away from open revolt and
drafted alternative wordings for the disputed passages.

    Latvia has always had stronger ties to Moscow than have the
other two republics. Latvian Riflemen made up the Kremlin's elite
Praetorian Guard in the years after the Bolshevik Revolution, and
party boss Arvid Pelshe became a fixture of the Brezhnev
gerontocracy. Latvian First Secretary Janis Vagris, who gained his
post last October when Boris Pugo was promoted to Moscow's Party
Control Committee, is viewed by many as a compromise choice whose
views on reform and political pluralism are acceptable to party
conservatives.

    One intriguing measure of popular support for the cause of
Latvian self-determination came during the parliamentary elections,
when Juris Dobelis, a leader of the Latvian National Independence
Movement, ran against four establishment candidates, including
First Secretary Vagris. The Communist Party chief squeaked by with
51%, and Dobelis polled an impressive 34%. When the Latvian Popular
Front asked its 100-member council last June whether it should
"join the struggle for Latvia's complete and economic
independence," the vote was a unanimous yes. In May Popular Front
members opened formal contacts with the leaders of Latvian exile
organizations at a gathering in France. The movement hopes to score
well in local elections this December and in balloting for the
Latvian supreme soviet next February. As Kezbers admits, "They have
slogans, programs -- and no responsibility for the past."

    LITHUANIA

    One of the more dramatic moments at the Congress of the
People's Deputies occurred in early June, when members of the
Lithuanian delegation walked out of the Kremlin's Palace of
Congresses in protest against Gorbachev's plan to put the question
of a new Committee for Constitutional Supervision to a vote.
Considering the importance of constitutional issues for the
republics, the Lithuanians wanted more time to discuss the makeup
of the committee. Gorbachev compromised and referred the matter to
a commission. From the point of view of the pragmatic Estonians,
it was a case once again of the Lithuanians "mounting a charge on
white horses." But Popular Front leader Virgilijus Cepaitis sees
it differently: "We have been giving lessons to Moscow, and they
have been accepting them. We are helping Gorbachev by showing the
way."

    Lithuanians make up fully 80% of the population in the
southernmost Baltic republic, assuring bedrock support for Sajudis,
as the Lithuanian Popular Front is known. One indication of the
group's growing power came on the eve of its founding congress last
October, when the reform-minded Algirdas Brazauskas became leader
of the Lithuanian Communist Party. He received thunderous ovations
at the meeting, especially after his dramatic announcement that the
Vilnius Cathedral would be returned to the Roman Catholic Church.
But relations soon deteriorated in the bruising parliamentary
debate last November over proposed changes in the constitution. At
Brazauskas' urging, the Lithuanians declined to follow Estonia's
lead in rebelling against Moscow. Angry Lithuanians took to the
streets, and Sajudis called for a symbolic work protest.

    Troubles erupted again last February, after representatives
from Sajudis and Vincentas Cardinal Sladkevicius called for the
restoration of Lithuanian sovereignty at ceremonies marking the
71st anniversary of the beginning of Lithuania's short-lived
independence. During an emergency party plenum, Brazauskas warned
that such actions might lead to imposition of a "special form of
rule." The scare tactics failed: in last March's parliamentary
elections, Sajudis candidates picked up 36 out of 42 seats.
Brazauskas also won, but only after his Sajudis opponent bowed out
to ensure his victory.

    Since then, the party leadership has met monthly with Sajudis
representatives to discuss draft laws. But the present idyll in
Lithuania's volatile political scene is bound to end, as both sides
prepare for the electoral battle for local and republic-wide
elections in December and February. The Lithuanian Popular Front
has also had to move faster to keep ahead of the drift in public
thinking toward the more radical positions of the Latvian
Liberation League. Says Lithuanian Party Secretary Berezov: "We
fear that some hotheads want to speed up the process and have it
all tomorrow. They risk ruining everything."

    At present, the economic life of the three Baltic republics is
so intertwined with the Soviet Union that it would be impossible
for them to go it alone. "We can decide to be separate and free,
but what will we do the next morning?" asks Vello Pohla, leader of
the Estonian Green Movement. "Everything has been damaged by 50
years of Soviet administration. We have to reach a standard of
living first that would make it possible to raise the question of
secession." Latvian Ideology Secretary Kezbers points out that the
West, for all its moral support, would probably offer little
economic help to three independent Baltic republics. As he puts it,
"No room has been booked for us in the Europe Hotel."

    Moscow would not even need to resort to tanks and troops to
dampen the Baltic enthusiasm for secession. It could exert pressure
just by slapping an embargo on fuel and raw-material shipments. Yet
there are numerous way stations of sovereignty on the road to
independence. Some Baltic economic thinkers believe, for example,
that the region could turn into a clearinghouse between East and
West, where Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians could serve as
go-betweens for Westerners eager to open up the Soviet market. "The
Baltic states may not be as exotic as Hong Kong, but they make a
good bridge between East and West," says Kezbers. "The Soviet Union
is a vast country needing everything, and we know how it works."

    The political benefits of such a strategy are obvious. "We
cannot make Russia go away, and we are not about to leave Estonia,"
says Estonian Popular Front leader Veidemann. "So we must find a
clever way to coexist and create conditions that would make the
Soviet Union interested in our independence."

    If Gorbachev responds wisely and generously to the
nationalistic stirrings in the Baltics, he will win on two fronts:
the cause of perestroika throughout the Soviet Union will be
advanced, and one more irritant in East-West relations will
disappear. Living next door to good neighbors is always better in
the long run than sharing a home with unhappy relatives.