Monday, Oct. 24, 1988

Back in The Baltics

By John Kohan/Moscow

When underground electric cables had to be laid in the Estonian capital of Tallinn this summer, a call went out for community help. Working mostly with shovels, some 5,000 volunteers dug a trench more than a mile long in one night. A Soviet television reporter asked a ruddy-faced young Estonian why he had come. "I want to help so that perestroika doesn't begin just up there," the volunteer explained with a wave of the arm, "but with me here, with this shovel."

Those must have been gratifying words for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has repeatedly pushed for less talk and more work. But they were double- edged. The shovel brigade was not organized by the Communist Party but by a new, pro-perestroika grass-roots movement called the Estonian Popular Front. Since the group first emerged last April in the most northerly of the Soviet Union's three Baltic republics, similar movements have taken root and flourished in neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, attracting hundreds of thousands of followers. What unites them is the common goal of promoting greater regional autonomy. In the words of the Latvian movement's draft program, people want "to be masters in their own land."

Since annexing Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania in 1940, Moscow has tried to stifle resurgent nationalism in the Baltic states. Flags from the brief era of independence between the two World Wars were banned from public display. So many workers flooded in from outside the region that non-Latvians now outnumber Latvians (52% to 48%) and Estonians constitute only 60% of the population in their republic. Economic decisions take the form of edicts from Moscow. Notes Indrek Toome, chief ideologist of the Estonian Communist Party: "In our own republic we are not entitled to fix the price of a cinema ticket or the cost of a jar of Tallinn sprats. This overcentralization angers people."

Under Gorbachev, the Kremlin has displayed a willingness to devolve more responsibility to local authorities. Visiting the region in August, Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev declared that "the national factor should become one more motive force of perestroika." Nowhere has Moscow's apparent about- face in the Baltics been more evident than in the guardedly favorable recognition given the popular fronts. When the Estonians held an organizational congress in Tallinn two weeks ago, Communist Party First Secretary Vaino Valjas brought greetings from Gorbachev. At the end of a similar conference in Riga last week, Latvian party leader Janis Vagris stressed that "Communists and members of the Popular Front have common objectives. "

This shrewd collaboration may be calculated to keep the party from losing the initiative and divert nationalist sentiment into controllable channels. But the tactic is not without risk. Concerned that 90% of the Popular Front members are Estonian, Russians who live in the Baltic republic have formed their own "international" movement. Estonian leader Valjas has urged Popular Front members to "avoid aggravating nationalist disputes."

Marju Lauristin, an Estonian activist, has suggested that the Popular Front was born out of the "alienation" many Estonians feel toward existing social and political organizations. The popular front movements have certainly reinvigorated public debate in the Baltics, inspiring proposals for everything from local convertible currencies and free economic zones to the establishment of independent relations with foreign countries. If such dreams and hopes result in nothing but more empty words, the return of old frustrations will be all the more bitter.