Growing support for
BALTIC STATES found a general interest in, and sympathy for, the national-liberation movements in Western Europe. ( "We understand their aspirations.") They were not seen as being able to offer effective help now, but there was interest on the theoretical level. (I noticed a sticker from a Catalan nationalist group in the Sajudis office.) On the other hand, there seemed to be a general recognition now of the need to appeal directly to popular movements in the capitalist countries and not just to governments.
The mood of the representatives of Rukh and Adradzenie (the Byelorussian national democratic movement) that I
I FOUND Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, relaxed and calm in the first days of June. There were no deployments of Soviet troops in the city center area, and the shortages were not notably worse than in the other Baltic capitals, that is, about normal for Soviet conditions, or maybe even a bit better. There seemed to be no shortages of basic foodstuffs, only occasionally of coffee and tea. The main hotel was nearly empty, but tourists are a jittery breed, and the ban on travel to
Lithuania had only been lifted a week before.
The attitude of the nationalist Sajudis leaders was confident.
At the time they were hosting delegations from the Moscow and Leningrad people's fronts, and their main office was filled with solidarity aid.
GERRY FOLEY
S
OLIDARITY WITH LITHUA-
NIA has become a mass movement in the Soviet Union. In the other Baltic republics, the governments themselves, representing around two-thirds majorities in parliament, support Lithuania. In other areas, specific solidarity organizations are developing. For example, a representative of Rukh, the Ukrainian national democratic movement, at the congress of the Estonian People's Front told me about a network of solidarity committees across the USSR's second largest republic.
The Lithuanian model for
Russia
It was also seemed that Lithuania had become a magnet for the democratic movements in the USSR. Tamara, a member of the delegation from the Leningrad
People's Front in Vilnius, told me that her organization saw Lithuania as the future of Russia as well. She had no hesitations about supporting Lithuanian independence and no fears about the fate of the
Russian speaking population.
She stressed that since the Lithuanian people had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, they would have to recover their independence before the question of their participating in a
"renewed union" could be posed. Her remarks were seconded by members of the Moscow Popular Front delegation.
Representatives of the whole spectrum of the Lithuanian national-democratic movement told me that they were now relying essentially on the support of the opposition movements in other parts of the Soviet Union, including Russia. In fact, the most outspoken criticism of the attitude of the Western powers toward the Lithuanian struggle came from Antonas Terleckas, leader of the Lithuanian Freedom League, a small hard-line proindependence party.
Delusions about attitude of
Western governments
Other figures in the Baltic national democratic movements told me that they thought the attitude of the Western governments was changing and becoming more favorable to them. Among such illusions was the idea that although Thatcher received the Lithuanian premier Prunskiene coldly, the iron lady warmed to her as the discussion went on.
However, the fundamental fact is that Sajudis has found its allies among the other mass democratic movements in the Soviet Union, and has moved toward basing itself on an international movement of solidarity initially in the Soviet Union but which could be extended more widely. I spoke to during the congress of the Estonian People's Front was ebullient. From being isolated and persecuted dissidents, they had been catapulted into being members of elected governing bodies. Both were buoyed up also by the continuing growth of their movements. They were confident that Gorbachev's campaign against Lithuania could be defeated, and certain of their ability to defeat their own local neo-Stalinist enemies.
Byelorussia still has a neo-Stalinist administration. And the Ivashko regime in Ukraine, while recently installed by Gorbachev, is not very much reconstructed. In Byelorussia, the national democratic movement has made a breakthrough in some areas, notably the capital, Minsk. In Ukraine, the democratic opposition (of which Rukh was a component) won about a fourth of the seats in the republic's Supreme Soviet, but Rukh made important advances locally, notably in west Ukraine. The representative of Adradzenie said that while national consciousness in Byelorussia had been in fact quite weak, it was now growing very rapidly. Circumventing the economic blockade
The various representatives of the Baltic and other democratic movements that I talked to gave an impression of a rapid decay of the Stalinist regime in the USSR. The Balts said that Gorbachev had only managed to impose an effective blockade of shipments to Lithuania by rail and air. Blocking over-the-road shipments would require a huge police and military mobilization, of which the regime seemed incapable. Furthermore, Lithuanian managers told me that they had no difficulty in making individual agreements with enterprise directors in other parts of the USSR, including Russia. These deals are awkward, but they give the Lithuanians maneuvering room.
An enterprising editor of the new private daily in Vilnius, Respublica, told me how he travelled to Russia in search of newsprint and managed to buy it at a rate of five kilos for one kilo of meat. The editor of the Sajudis paper, Aigimimas told reum for amica priar deal duced in 3 return for a chemical product produced in June 18, 1990 • #187 International Viewpoint
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Lithuanian independence movement
BALTIC STATES / ROMANIA the republic. The papers are generally running reduced editions, marked "blockade
There is a great hunger for newspapers. The more popular ones are rarely seen in the kiosks. They sell out immediately. Whenever there are independent or opposition newspapers, a long line immediately forms. Respublica goes essentially to a list of subscribers closed months ago. It has had to keep its press run at about 75,000 for lack of paper.
One afternoon, after passing line after line at the newsstands in Vilnius, I saw a table heaped with papers, but with no line. It was Sovetskaya Litva ("Soviet Lithuania," the organ of the "night party," the Moscow loyalist CP). Those selling it evoked neither enthusiasm or indignation. They were simply ignored.
Lithuania has become a focus for the national democratic movements in general in the USSR. At the congress of the Estonian People's Front, all the representatives of delegations from other national democratic movements got standing ovations as they went to the platform. But the ovation for the representative of Lithuania, the speaker of the Supreme Soviet, a tall dignified figure, was of a different order. A wave of emotion swept through
Representatives of a gamut of views in the Baltic republics told me that the Lithuanian declaration of independence had given impetus to the struggle for national rights. Sajudis seems to be a center for all the national democratic movements. First of all, it fosters cultural organizations of a whole range of nationalities resident in the republic. I talked to a representative of the Mordvin cultural organization, Danguole Bickauskene, who is married to a Lithuanian. She is a poet in Erza, one of the two literary languages of the Mordvins, a Finno-Ugrian people whose historic homeland lies to the east of the Urals. Demands for genuine cultural rights
There are a number of Finno-Ugrian islands in the Russian republic. All of them are small, the largest, including the Mordvins numbering about a million, and have been under Russian rule for many centuries. The Mordvins, in addition, have been largely dispersed. Their language is not used in public life, and school children are taught from the beginning in Russian. Even among this people, a national movement has started to develop, mainly around demands for genuine cultural rights. Bickauskene also told me about a national movement beginning among the Komi, another Finno-Ugrian people.
Politically and culturally the strongest of the Finno-Ugrian peoples in the USSR, the Estonians also maintain contacts with their linguistic relatives in the Russian 4 russification of these peoples. The editor republics, and are very much aware of the International Viewpoint #187 • June 18, 1990 of Looming, the principal Estonian literary magazine confirmed Bickauskene's description of languages and cultures on the brink of extinction.
However, a worker in the Sajudis office in touch with the national movements told me that the Komi people had become a factor in the new labor movement in the Vorkuta area. A small but significant minority of the miners (up to 15%) are Komi, and the new union movement had had to take up some of their demands. The movements that are getting underway among these small peoples will pose a challenge to the new
Russian republic, where most of them live. Contacts with Caucasus and
Central Asia
Sajudis has published a pamphlet in English (The Lithuanian Way) that includes addresses for a very wide range of national democratic movements across the Soviet Union. The Sajudis office worker in charge of contacts with other national movements had made trips to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and told me that these movements tended generally to look to the Baltic for their inspiration. That included the progressive sections of the Azerbaijan People's Front and the Uzbek front Birlik. But she stressed that these movements face much more difficult conditions than in the Baltic, in par-
La politically atmosphere maintained by Moscow.
The Russian Supreme Soviet was in session while I was in the Baltic republics and the election of the president of the republic was going on. where people, in all walks of life, were listening intently to the long and (to me) numbing speeches of delegates.
The election of Boris Yeltsin clearly raised very great hopes. Wherever the enfant terrible of the CPSU ends up, his defeat of his conservative rivals has intensified political life in the Soviet Union and thereby increased the possibilities and the challenges for all the democratic movements. Leaders of the Baltic movements that I talked to said it meant a "new situation."*
IT THIS WAY, MACHAIL RUSSIA BREAKS AWAY, THE BALTICS WONT HAVE ANYTHING TO SECEDE FROM TSH
A CCORDING to the interna-
tional observers, the proceedings were more or less fair Whatever fraud or incompetence there may have been, it was not of such an extent as to invalidate the result. As for the December events, there is not a shadow of a doubt that the media, both in the imperialist countries and in the East European countries engaged in a massive campaign of intoxication and misinformation at the time.? It is, furthermore, true that opposition groups existed before the events and, notably, that an appeal for the overthrow of Ceausescu, signed by the National Salvation Front, was distributed on the eve of the Communist Party congress last November.3 Nor can it be questioned that the decision of the army to let the dictator fall and to fight against his praetorian guard had a big influence on the happy outcome of the clash.