IN BRIEF
GLASNOST
Support for Yeltsin IN AN interview with Rouge, the paper of the French section of the Fourth International, Moscow People's Front leader Boris Kagarlitski commented on the surge of support for the candidacy of Boris Yeltsin in the recent Soviet elections.
"Technically, what sparked the recent mobilizations was a TV program in which Boris Yeltsin was interviewed and in which tendencious questions from a few dozen supposed viewers were put to him. He was embarrassed...It was obvious that many of the letters had been set up. On March 17, in another very popular TV program, journalists said that the letters from TV viewers read in the first program were falsifications. They said this after checking the addresses of the supposed letter-writers and finding that they did not exist. This machination touched off a wave of suspi-
Kagarlitski described the demonstrations in support of Yeltsin's candidacy as
"The first one was in the Bratievo district in Moscow, where there is a very strong self-management movement. The neighborhood people have had very sharp conflicts with the local authorities on environmental questions, and they have mobilized. They have created base committees. The chair of one such committee participated in the conference of the Moscow People's Front last week. He was the one who organized the first rally, with 15,000 participants, in Bratievo.....
"The second demonstration was very largely spontaneous. It was given impetus by the presence of various informal groups, including the Moscow People's Front and the Memorial Group."
As for what Yeltsin represents politically, Kagarlitski said:
"You have to distinguish between two things — Yeltsin himself and the movement he has aroused. In the recent period, Yeltsin has proved to be a relatively; moderate candidate, even frightened by the breadth of the demonstrations he aroused. Moreover, he has retreated on the question of multi-partyism.... From this standpoint, there is a gap between Yeltsin, the symbol, representing a figure repressed by the apparatus, and popular because of that, and his political project, which remains relatively vague." * Clashes in IN FEBRUARY Moskovskii Vestnik, the journal of the Moscow People's Front, published the following brief article. It illustrates the tensions growing in Latvia in advance of the March 26 elections and, possibly, the Moscow People's Front's atti-
One has also to wonder what sort of a mass demonstration could be attacked with relative impunity by "hundreds" of youth, and in what circumstances.
About 100,000 people took part in a demonstration and rally in honor of the "Day of the Soviet Army" on February 22 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. On hundreds of placards was written "Invincible and legendary!" "The Soviet army — our pride!" and "Shame to the provocateurs who insult the honor and dignity of the Soviet army!"
The columns of marchers were made up essentially of participants in the Internationalist Front [Inter-Front], that is Russian-speaking inhabitants of Riga, former front-line soldiers, retired soldiers, and labor veterans. Their chests were adorned with military and civilian orders and medals. The demonstrators started their route from the Lenin monument and went to Vic-
At the same time, in the center of the square several hundred young people gathered, who expressed their negative attitude to serving in the Soviet army, calling it an occupation force. Scattered clashes took place between the Inter-Front demonstrators and the young people protesting against service in the army. In particular those veterans who appeared in the rear columns were objects of hostility. InterFrontists had their medals torn off and their placards grabbed. Naturally, these actions energetic opposition. Only the intervention of the police averted a mass
The demonstrators gathering in Victory Square expressed their protest against the "stop action" organized by the militantminded youth. Speakers said that they did not consider themselves immigrants or
AROUND THE WORLD occupiers. Many of their fathers and grandfathers lived in Latvia and more than a few relatives had given their lives to liberate Latvian land from the German fascists and robbers. "Long live the Soviet army, liberator of the Baltic lands" resounded over Victory Square.
On February 2, also in Victory Square a 50,000-strong demonstration of the InterFront was held. Participants in it expressed concern about inter-ethnic problems in Latvia. * "A flag of struggle" ON THE EVE of the Soviet elections, Pravda published another major attack on Estonian "nationalism." The article was signed by A. Petrushov and V. Shirokov, who were described as "special correspondents" in the Estonian capital, Tallin.
Fire was mainly focused on two targets, capitulation to nationalism in the Estonian CP and expressions of so-called anti-Soviet and anti-Russian nationalism by representatives of the People's Front (Rahvarinne).
Regarding the Estonian CP, the correspondents wrote: "As in Paida, in other regional party conferences demands have been raised for forming a "sovereign' Communist Party of Estonia. Does this mean separating off Estonian from Russian-speaking Communists? Is this a call for splitting the Communist Party? In the election of delegates to some party conferences, the criterion was nationality."
The correspondents warned: "We are not dramatizing things, but facts are are facts. Other 'fighters' are using the development of glasnost and democratization to say anything they want. On the one hand, they are mounting massive attacks against individual Communist leaders, presenting them as being in opposition to 'the people;' and on the other they are challenging the leading role of the Party, undertaking open attempts to establish the idea that the Communist Party of Estonia is only one faction in the republic."
Regarding the People's Front, the Pravda correspondents accused E. Savisaara of making the following comments when the Soviet flag was hauled down from the Tall Herman tower in Tallin, to be replaced by the blue, black and white flag of Estonia:
"For decades past, they tried to make us forget who were were, to turn the Estonians into a people without a history. The raising of this flag is for us like a rediscov-
"We have won a moral victory. If last fall we said that Estonia was in our hands, and if we are gradually beginning to believe that the government can be in our hands, then today we have raised this flag as a flag of struggle, and we say that unde this flag next fall, we will put the parliament of Estonia into the hands of those chosen by the people and endowed by them with a mandate." * April 3, 1989 • #159 International Viewpoint
Gorbachev's