Soviet Union Cry Independence

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.