Kremlin agrees to economic autonomy for Baltic republics

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 8

Kremlin agrees to economic autonomy for Baltic republics

NZPA-Reuter Moscow A top Soviet leader has signalled that the Kremlin agrees to plans by the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to introduce wide economic autonomy from the start of 1990.

First Vice-President Anatoly Lukyanov, a close aide of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his No. 2 as head of State, urged the country’s inner Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, to approve the plans promptly at a session today.

gested that the once-inde-pendent Baltic republics were aiming to break up the federal Soviet Union.

Lukyanov, also a candidate or non-voting member of the Politburo, said the debate had shown that nobody was really opposed to the project, which several' deputies argued would break the decades-old bureaucratic control from Moscow of the economies of the country’s 15 republics. The Deputy Prime Minister and economic reform chief, Leonid Abalkin, told deputies it was essential to approve the Baltic plan, which would give an impetus to economic reform throughout the country and especially in areas where it was lagging.

independence, is widely expected to boost the already fast pace of political change in the region.

nounce local legislation which they said discriminated against them. Strike organisers said 12,000 had stopped work in key industries while Communist Party officials put the number at 5000. Soviet television showed striking workers at an engine plant voting overwhelmingly to resume work.

Mr Lukyanov spoke before some 100,000 people supporting autonomy crowded into the central square in Riga, capital of Latvia, whose own Parliament is expected shortly to follow Lithuania and Estonia in voting for economic independence. Under the project discussed by the Supreme Soviet, the republics would have control of their own Budgets, most of their industry, transport, trade and natural resources.

The Latvian news agency, Latinform, said Wednesday night’s demonstrators in Riga also demanded quick local elections and the formal introduction of a multiparty system. “The situation in the republic is worrisome, feelings are running high,” a Latvian member of Parliament, Mavriks Vulfsons, told Reuters.

“We must untie the hands of the Baltic republics and allow them to press ahead with planning for the introduction of regional self-financing from January 1 next year," Mr Lukyanov told the Soviet, which he himself was chairing, yesterday.

The country’s miners’ strike, which shut down the two largest coalfields over the last two weeks, appeared all but resolved after meetings this week between miners’ representatives and the Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov. Tass news agency said 31 pits still were idle — mainly at Voroshilovgrad and the Volynskaya region in the Ukraine.

“We have been more aggressive in ideology than our neighbours but have been lagging behind in the economic field.”

His remarks were broadcast across the Soviet Union early on Thursday in a recording of a sometimes stormy debate in which some Russian deputies sug-

During the debate, one member of the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling Politburo, the Russian Federation President, Vitaly Vorotnikov, and a

candidate member of the body, Yury Maslyukov, voiced opposition to immediate approval. But summing up, Mr

Economic reform in the Baltic republics, which were absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940 after more than 20 years of

In Estonia, minority Russian workers pressed on with a strike they began on Monday to de-