IN THE RUN-UP to the November 29 Soviet CP Central
Committee meeting that is to consider constitutional amendments restricting the rights of the national republics,
Moscow confronts new flare-ups among a whole series of non-Russian peoples.
By mid-November, more than half of the populations of
Estonia and Lithuania had reportedly signed petitions opposing Gorbachev's amendments. On November 16, the
Estonian parliament almost unanimously adopted a resolution declaring "sovereignty." On November 18, at the urging of the new "reformer" first secretary of the Lithuanian CP, Algiras
Brauzaskas, the Lithuanian parliament refused to follow this example. But that decision prompted a walkout by representatives of the independent organization, Sajudis, which is already a mass organization. The decision was also followed immediately by a protest demonstration of 10,000 people in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Also, on November
18, Armenia was paralyzed by a general strike and 600,000 people rallied in its capital of Erevan.
GERRY FOLEY
HE PROPOSED amendments to the Soviet constitution would give the Soviet central legislature the right to overrule the republican legislatures and to impose "special forms of administration" on the now formally sovereign republics. In neither case would these constitutional changes introduce real changes. But they represent reformal rights of the ductions of the republics at a time when Gorbachev's perestroika has aroused hopes of concessions to aspirations that have long been mocked and trampled upon.
In particular, the clause about the right to impose "special forms of administration"
has a sinister ring, coming as it does in the wake of the events in the Armenian SSR and in Nagorno-Karabakh. It seems obviously intended to strengthen the Kremlin's hand for intervening directly in republics where people start to take their formal or promised national rights too seriously.
In the Armenian SSR, the revival of the national movement focused on regaining
Nagorno-Karabakh began with great hopes in perestroika and the Gorbachev leadership. In the first demonstrations, pictures of the Soviet leader were carried. The initial leadership were moderate intellectuals well
28 mies ras exactly topposite laceme integrated into the local bureaucracy. The lin's claims that anti-perestroika forces were behind the protests.
However, the movement in the Armenian SSR has clearly gone beyond the program of perestroika and its previous moderate leaders (see /V 148). On November 16, a rally of 500,000 people in Erevan proclaimed the hard-line nationalist Parouir Airikian the representative of the movement abroad. Airikian was portrayed by the Kremlin press as the evil genius behind the movement. Before perestroika he served 17 years in prison for his nationalist views. He was jailed in the first wave of mass protests and later expelled from the USSR. Soviet leaders try to head off radicalization
In Lithuania, the Soviet leadership apparently tried to head off a radicalization of the reviving national movement. On October 19, Ringaudas Songaila resigned as first secretary of the local CP. He had been a focus of hatred since the forcible dispersion of a demonstration in Gedimas square in the Lithuanian capital on September 28.
The next day Algirdas Brazauskas was elected to succeed him. The new secretary had been the highest party official on the platform at the Sajudis rallies on June 24 the republic (see /V 151).
Brazauskas seems to have played the decisive role in getting the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet to reject the proposed resolutions on sovereignty. Arunas Zabriunas, a Lithuanian film-maker and member of Sajudis, was quoted in the November 19 International Herald Tribune as saying "He [Brazauskas] exerted a lot of pressure....He was very clever in how he spoke and it worked."
Solidarity among the Baltic movements
Whether this was a pyrrhic victory, however, remains to be seen. The protest demonstration in Vilnius that followed indicates that it could mark the break between the bureaucratic reformers and the mass national movement in Lithuania that was consummated in the Armenian case by the resurgence of the mass demonstrations in the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh after the Soviet central authorities' rejection of the Karabakh Committee's demands.
According to the International Herald Tribune, the Lithuanian demonstrators raised the cry of "betrayal." In walking out of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, according to Libération of November 19, the representatives of Sajudis declared their intention of "appealing to the people."
The Lithuanian protesters were reported to be particularly bitter because the attitude of their Supreme Soviet was seen as a stab in the back of the Estonians. In this connec tion, it is worth noting that Boris Kagarlinski in his interview published in the last two issues of IV pointed out that the Estonian independent movement was seeking support throughout the Soviet Union. It seems reasonable to expect that there would be a strong sense of solidarity among the Baltic movements in particular.
According to Le Monde's correspondent Bernard Guetta, the Estonian Supreme Soviet's movement was intended in fact to head off a radicalization toward the demand of outright independence. The picture on the cover of the November 18 Libération in fact showed an Estonian demonstrator with a sign saying in Estonian, "A free, Estonian Estonia" (Vaba Eesti Eesti!")
The Soviet authorities have scheduled a CC plenum to consider inter-nation relations in the USSR for mid-1989. But it seems more than likely that the movements for national rights will spread further and radicalize before then. *