THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the 90 seats decided in the February 24 first round of the elections for the Lithuanian
Supreme Soviet were won by candidates who claimed to be committed to the perspective of rapid independence.
(Theoretically, the Supreme Soviet has the right to opt for secession from the USSR, although Gorbachev is trying to create new legal barriers to that.) Candidates backed by the national-democratic front Sajudis won 72 seats, of which 13 went to members of the independent CP.
backed by Sajudis and another nine by the rump CP sponsored by Moscow. The Sajudis backed a multiparty and two Christian Democrats were also elected with its support. The second round of the elections, scheduled for
March 10, was not expected to change the picture, and the
Sajudis-backed candidates already elected represent an absolute majority.
GERRY FOLEY
OMMENTING ON the election results, Pravda of February 26 played up a statement by Vytautas Landsbergis, chair of Sajudis, that the only possibility now was the formation of a coalition government including what that means is far from clear, since the election results suggest that the Communist Party is divided into three groups
- a wing of the independent party that
Sajudis finds acceptable, a wing that it does not, and then the Moscow loyalist rump party at the other end of the spec-
Sajudis itself, like the other Baltic fronts, includes many Communist Party members. Where exactly do their first loyalties lie? Is there a political force in
Sajudis capable of maintaining both a broad front for national-democrat goals and a consistent course toward national liberation? To what extent is Sajudis' trajectory determined by harder-line nationalist groups outside it?
In the case of Latvia, the Latvian Independence Movement (Latvias Neatkaribas Kustiba) has grown rapidly and exercised a strong influence on the Peo-
• ple's Front. In Estonia, also there are a
/ number of independence groups, and a
International Viewpoint #180 • March 12, 1990 project for an Estonian congress, involving refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the republic Supreme Soviet. There are also hard-line independence groups in
Lithuania, but it is less clear how much influence they wield.
The election results also indicate that as one-party rule is breaking down and the concrete political and economic choices begin to be posed, the unity of Sajudis as an anti-totalitarian bloc is coming apart. This is inevitable and represents a political advance, but it could present an immediate danger to the unity necessary to achieve the goals of the national movement. Edgar Savisaar, leader of the Estonian People's Front (Rahvarinne), stressed this problem in a long article in January 26 issue of Reede ("Friday," formerly Sirp ja Vasar, "Hammer and Sickle"), the Estonian writers' weekly.
Savisaar took note of the emergence of 12 parties, and warned that fragmentation could allow the Estonian Communist Party to play a balancing role to hold the national movement back. (A December poll indicated that only 9% of voters in the republic supported the CP, 2% of the Estonians and 19% of the non-Estonians, the latter making up about 40% of the republic's population).
republic should be restored in May at the latest.
The Russian second secretary of the party (as a general rule, the second secretaries of the republic CPs are Russians),
Vladimir Berezov was cited as saying that the Baltic countries had to consider how to exert an influence in negotiations in
Moscow, since the support of the democratic forces was essential to winning their objective.
The first secretary of the Lithuanian CP,
Algirdas Brazauskas was cited in the February 24 issue of Literatura un Maksla, the paper of the Latvian creative workers' unions, as saying that negotiations with
Moscow on the renewal of Lithuanian statehood should begin as soon as possible. He thought that the question would be decided by the newly elected republic
Supreme Soviet, and that independence might be declared in July, on the seventieth anniversary of the Lithuanian-Soviet peace treaty.
Debate on tactics for achieving independence
As independence has been accepted as an immediate objective by the Baltic national-democratic fronts, the question of the tactics of achieving it is also being sharply debated. For example, in the February 16 issue of Reede, Marju Lauristin, a leader of the People's Front and now of the newly founded Social Democratic Party, argued against the Estonian Congress and for centering attention on the republic Supreme Soviet, among other things, on the basis of what she considered to be the attitude of the Western powers.
"We are already in a transitional period. The annexed territory of the Estonian republic, called the Estonian SSR, is in transition to an independent Estonian republic. We all have an interest in assuring that this transition is as painless as possible for all inhabitants of Estonia, and without big economic and social catastrophes. Today all Estonian political forces that talk about independence stress that it must come about by the parliamentary road." Lauristin put a great stress on the problem of political legitimacy and avoiding confrontation. The results of the March 18 elections to the Estonian Supreme Soviet, also likely to bring victory for forces pledged to independence, will probably create a field for maneuver as complex as the one that
March 12, 1990• #180 International Viewpoint seems to have emerged in Lithuania. The
March 1 Pravda carried a long article by
I. Teterin, the paper's correspondent in
Tallin. He described a situation in the
Estonian CP that seems rather similar to the one in the Lithuanian CP before the
Moscow-backed split.
"Until recently, the Communist Party of
Estonia distanced itself from outright separatist tendencies. In the plenums of the party committees, it was firmly declared that secession from the USSR was impossible. An ugly picture was given of political groups such as the National Independence Party, the Citizens' Committees and so on. But gradually in the Communist Party ranks also the idea of national self-determination began to be debated."
Conflict of positions at
Estonian CP conference
Thus, two positions appeared at the republic party's conference, sharpened, Teterin said, by a conflict between Estonians and non-Estonians. "The first variant was called 'A Program for Renewing the Communist Party of Estonia.' In this, the present period in Estonia is described as transitional. This period will end when Estonia is restored as an independent state. The party will be pledged to fight for an independent Estonia and a democratic society similar to the Scandinavian countries. Its relations with CPSU will be only those of allies, based on common "The second variant is, more modestly called, 'An Action Program.' It proclaims a policy aimed above all at achieving general human values, building a society based on taking up the needs of the individual. The republic will be a sovereign state and a member of the Soviet federathat is, it will be a constitutional state. Therefore, Estonia will have its own citizenship, will participate in the activity of the international organizations and its elected government will decide all questions of its internal life. The Estonian Communist Party will be an inalienable part of the CPSU."
Pravda's correspondent kept a guarded tone, but wrote: " You will agree that it seemed strange when from the platform of the congress, the second secretary of the Paida district, A. Maarend, said: *Today the Communist Party is a structure imposing an occupation regime on Estonia. Instead a different party should be formed, and the Communist Party's assets should be turned over to the organs of local self-government.'
Insidiously, Teterin continued: "What kept the delegates from a split? I think that not the least factor was the assessment the resolutions of the Twentieth Congress of the Lithuanian CP at the February plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU." He was referring to the start of the excommunication of the Lithuanian CP majority and Moscow throwing its material weight behind the loyalist split off.
In general, Teterin took a sinuous tack.
For example, he wrote... "the idea of civil peace [compromise with non-Estonians] is beginning to be developed even by the radical political groups that stand hard-line separatist positions. Thus, after the well-known assembly in Tallin on February 2 that loudly adopted a Declaration on the Question of Achieving the Independence of Estonia,' characteristic documents appeared in the press. The main Citizens Committee said: 'Once again, we assure the Russians, Slavs and other nationalities that in the democratic Estonian republic there will be no room for discrimination on the basis of nation-
This, Teterin said, "was a political slap in the face to the Communist Party. With a absolute majority in the Supreme Soviet of the Republic, the Communists have voted in more than a few laws in the recent period containing elements of disrequirement messing up the electoral system, linguistic restrictions and so on."
These arguments are totally perfidious. First, they slip in the idea, without any proof, that the radical nationalist groups previously favored discrimination against non-Estonians. Secondly, the residence requirement voted by the republic parliament and thrown out by the constitutional tribunal of the USSR was not based on nationality but length of residence. Similar restrictions exist under many federal systems where national differences are
Lack of consistent
Ideological conception
The Estonian CP's disarray was profound: "Unfortunately, this idea of civil peace could not change the course of the discussion. The reason for this, in my opinion was correctly characterized by Estonian CP Central Committee member L. Annus: *The state of things in the Communist Party of Estonian cannot be any different today because it lacks a consistent ideological conception accepted by
The serpentine approach of Teterin, as opposed to the usual crudity of such attacks, is obviously due to the relationship of forces. Moscow is politically on the defensive, with its local instrument of rule breaking its neck trying to adjust to a situation that has gone out of control. The Estonian CP's only remaining political advantage is the apparent support of about a fifth of the non-Estonian population. It is trying to parlay that for all it is
For example, in an answer to Savisaar's article in the January 26 Reede, in the February 16 issue of the same paper, Eduard Tinn, representing the CP, argued that the Estonian CP was the only force capa-
USSR ble of solving "the Russian question" in
"If we are heading for a normal democratic state, do we want in the future parliament separate parties representing a non-Estonian population of 40% - that is, parties formed on on ethnic and linguistic principles?"
But what is the special attraction of the
CP for non-Estonians, if not its identification with the power of the Russian state to defend them against real or feared pressures from the native population? The logic of that is not the CP serving as a bridge between the different communities but its surviving on the basis of inciting, or pandering to the fears of the non-Estonians. The majority of been alienated exactly the same reason — its identification with the Great Russian Stalinist dictatorship. The cause of democracy has been taken up most consistently and energetically by the national democratic People's Front — democratic as well as nationalist
In Literatura un Maksla of February 24, Viktors Daugmalis denounced attempts by the local and all-Union CP to present the People's Front as simply nationalist and not democratic as deliberate provocations. In Latvia, the non-natives form nearly half the population, and Moscow has responded to the growth and radicalization of national sentiment in a brutal way. Daugmalis mentioned many threats, including a picket of military men with
"Today, the army is neutral," suggesting that tomorrow it might not be. There has been a strident campaign about alleged insults to the military.
Pravda of February 22 carried a "letter from Soviet veterans" denouncing the moves of the Latvian Supreme Soviet to overturn the old Stalinist claims about the Latvian people demanding incorporation of their country into the USSR. On February 24, it ran a statement from the Council of Ministers of the USSR, called, of all things, "Against the Distortion of Historic Truth," also reasserting the old big lies, now thoroughly discredited both inside and outside of the Soviet Union.
The political situation in the Baltic republics is becoming more and more unstable, and it has a key importance for the democratic movement throughout the
Despite the rise of other mass nationaldemocratic movements, including one in the decisive Ukraine, they remain the cockpit of the national-democratic struggle, and the moves toward independence that now seem certain to follow the completion of the legislative elections in these republics will test the political and tactical capacities of both the nationaldemocratic leaders and the guard dogs of the Great Russian bureaucracy to their