America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott TALLINN

The Soviet empire is disintegrating so quickly and in so many ways that * neither Moscow nor Washington has been able to adjust its policies fast enough to keep up with events. Last week, while the East German regime went into free fall, nationalists in the Estonian parliament prepared to consider a resolution that explicitly challenges the legitimacy of Soviet rule and implicitly raises the possibility of an eventual declaration of independence.

Late last month Mikhail Gorbachev privately encouraged the leaders of Estonia and the other two Baltic republics, Latvia and Lithuania, to keep pushing for "self-determination." But, Gorbachev continued, "you must not demand that you leave the U.S.S.R." There were nods in the room from those who fear a violent Russian backlash against the Balts for their self- assertiveness and against Gorbachev himself for his tolerance of separatism.

"We must guarantee that the process of evolving toward sovereignty in Estonia doesn't jeopardize perestroika in the Soviet Union," says Arnold Green, 69, a veteran government official in Tallinn. "Otherwise, it will be a catastrophe for all of us."

But the caution of the Old Guard is giving way to the impatience of younger Estonians. They are gambling that the economic crisis of the U.S.S.R. is so severe and so all absorbing for the Kremlin -- and that preserving the goodwill of the outside world is so crucial -- that not even hard-liners will have the stomach for a crackdown. For a while, the Balts may settle for some kind of semiautonomous status in a far looser Soviet confederation. But in these dizzying times, "semi" may become a euphemism for almost total, and "a while" may be a matter of a few years rather than decades.

The U.S. has its own Baltic dilemma. The American government never accepted the Soviet annexation of the republics 49 years ago. To this day, the State Department recognizes "legations" of anti-Communist emigres as the "representatives of the last free and legal governments" of their captive homelands. American diplomats have long avoided traveling to the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, since going there requires Moscow's permission.

The diplomatic boycott made moral and political sense as long as Baltic independence seemed an impossible dream. Now the policy is applied too rigidly. An Estonian Deputy Prime Minister, Rein Otsason, and the republic's party ideologist, Mikk Titma, wanted to come to the U.S. recently to lay the foundation for what may be the next free government of their country. But the U.S. delayed the visitors' visas and gave them the official cold shoulder once they arrived.

"The U.S. doesn't recognize Moscow's right to rule Estonia," complains Rein Veideman, a leader of the pro-independence Popular Front, "but it also doesn't recognize Tallinn's right."

The months ahead are going to require finesse on everyone's part. The Balts have to be at least as clever as they are bold in defining sovereignty. Moscow is going to have to adopt an increasingly imaginative and elastic definition of what it means to be a republic of the U.S.S.R. And American policymakers ought to acknowledge that the kinds of people it once considered Kremlin quislings are now champions of the goal that the U.S. itself has advocated for nearly a half-century.