THE PRESS THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1989. Moscow’s Baltic dilemma

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 12

THE PRESS THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1989. Moscow’s Baltic dilemma

Moscow now plainly views the unrest and the demands for independence in the Baltic States as threats to the integrity of the Soviet Union itself. This accounts for the strength of the Soviet denunciation of the activities of those seeking greater independence and the warning to the leaders of the Baltic States to curb the nationalist demands. The growth of nationalism in many parts of the Soviet Union, in no place more strongly asserted than in the Baltic States, is likely to have a profound impact on both the future course of perestroika and glasnost, and ultimately on the success of the reforms that Mr Gorbachev is seeking to bring about within the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin has affirmed that the warning given to the Baltic States had the backing of Mr Gorbachev himself. This appears to have startled some people in the Baltic States who thought that Kremlin conservatives might have issued the warning without Mr Gorbachev’s own authority. Probably it is no great surprise that Mr Gorbachev was a party to making the statement. He has shown himself deeply concerned with ethnic questions.

After violent ethnic clashes in the southern part of the Soviet Union, Mr Gorbachev made a speech on national television which contained the following passage: “We are talking about isolated seats of inter-ethnic clashes; but if we don’t realise the entire, enormous danger of such phenomena, and if they spread, we may be in for worse times. People of all nationalities must know and realise this situation. Irresponsible slogans, political instigation, banking on the artificial opposition and collision of interest and on the superseding by some ethnic groups of others, and calls and actions along these lines may lead to common tragedy. Both the living and succeeding generations will curse both those who pushed the nation on this course and those who failed to caution it against the dangers involved in time and to prevent madness.” After such a comment to emphasise the seriousness with which he views ethnic demands, it is not at all surprising that Mr Gorbachev is associating himself with a warning to the Baltic States.

To the Soviet Union the Baltic States are unquestionably part of the union of republics, and are the separate Soviet socialist republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The fact that they became part of the Soviet Union at all was the result of a secret protocol attached to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed on August 23, 1939. The Soviet Union has only recently admitted this. A human chain of two million people linking the capitals of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania last week-end was formed on the anniversary of the signing of that pact and

posed a challenge to the legitimacy of Soviet rule in the Baltic States. At the beginning of this month, the Estonian Parliament passed a law decreeing that people who want to vote in local elections must have lived in their district for two years or elsewhere in the republic for five years. It also imposed residency qualifications for those who want to stand for local office. This law, which was deemed to be in contravention of the Soviet Constitution, effectively disenfranchised perhaps as many as 100,000 Russians who live in the republic. The move clearly troubled the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Both Mr Anatoly Lukyanov, First Vice-President of the Supreme Soviet, and Mr Veniamin Yakovlev, the Soviet Minister of Justice, argued that the laws passed in Estonia were incompatible with the Constitution of the Soviet Union. “The principles of Soviet federation,” Mr Lukyanov said, “are, above all, the quality of rights and duties of a person of any nationality all over the U.S.S.R. territory — the more so since equality of citizens stems not from the essence of the Soviet system, but also from international obligations assumed by the U.S.S.R. and equality of citizens before law will always remain a matter of importance for the whole country ... Involved in this are not relations of a republic with Moscow or the U.S.S.R., as is sometimes asserted. It is, above all, a matter of relations of each republic with other equal republics that form the Soviet Union.” The Baltic States have not experienced the violence that areas such as the Caucasus have suffered. Nevertheless, the challenge is distinct and Moscow is recognising it as such. The danger in what is happening is that, at a time when the Soviet Union seems prepared to tolerate a far greater diversity of political systems in Eastern Europe, including the establishment of the non-Communist Government in Poland, it has reason to fear that the Soviet Union itself will not hold together.

No country finds it easy to face the possibility of parts of the country seceding. For a country made up of a host of nationalities, as the Soviet Union is, the prospect of separations is nightmarish. Mr Gorbachev’s dilemma is that the success of perestroika depends on loosening central control of the economy; but he cannot afford to have the country break up while he is doing it. His own position depends on this not happening. The only way in which the Baltic States could gain true independence from Moscow would be if the rest of the Soviet Union were persuaded that those States form a special case and their secession therefore could not be considered a precedent for any other republic in what now forms the Soviet Union.