A first-hand view of Baltics' fight for self-determination

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The economic blockade against Lithuania has begun to be eased. In fact it had largely boomeranged against Gorbachev. Both the breakdown of the centralization of the economy and the decline in the authority of the regime made it difficult to enforce effectively.

Lithuanian factory managers were able to travel to the other republics, including the Russian Federation, and make deals one-by-one with enterprise managers and black-marketeers, and then bring in the necessary goods over the roads.

The editor of the Lithuanian daily Respublika described to me how he traveled to Russia and traded on a basis of one kilo of meat for five kilos of newsprint. Besides failing to intimidate the Lithuanians, the ineffective blockade was undermining the Soviet regime's authority more and more.

In the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in early June, I found irritating but not grave shortages. The city was relaxed. In the offices of Sajudis, the national movement, the support from other democratic movements in the Soviet Union was evident, mostly bags of sugar and medical supplies.

A change in outlook Delegations from Moscow and Leningrad, mostly members of the people's fronts that now dominate the governments of these two cities, were visiting Vilnius. Tamara, a young woman from Leningrad, told me that she and her companions looked to Lithuania as the future for Russia also. She fully supported the Lithuanian declaration of independence.

"Since the Baltic peoples were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union," she said, they have to recover their independence before they can consider participating in any union, "reformed" or not.

This enthusiastic and unconditional support seemed to mark a sea change in the outlook of the Russian democrats, who had tended to be skeptical toward the Baltic national movements in the past. Trivimi Velliste, one of the main Estonian nationalist leaders, explained that the Lithuanian declaration of independence and Gorbachev's economic reprisals have led to a fundamental shift in the attitude of the Russian opposition.

These developments have also galvanized and focused the national democratic movements in the other Baltic countries, according to Aivar Jirgens, editor of Neatkariba, the paper of the Latvian independence movement.

Pause for thought

The refusal of the Western powers to support Lithuania has had a major political imenterprise. He pointed out that the Communist Party supported private enterprise as much as any of the "right-wing" parties. "Right wing," for him meant radicalism in opposing the Stalinist state.

A complex scenario There seems to be little social differentiation in the Baltic movements; nothing like that which has occurred in the Ukrainian national movement with the rise of the Lviv Strike Committee.

But to the extent that the fronts are actually able to run the republics' governments, it is likely to develop very quickly. Savisaar, for example, was economics minister before becoming premier, and his economic program is no different than the now clearly unA VIA LITHUAN popular one of Gorbachev. In fact, he said that he favors cutting social services.

On the other hand, the fronts have encouraged, to various degrees, the organization of workers independent of the old bureaucratic structures, and independent unions are already important in Lithuania and Latvia. The Latvian and Lithuanian unions are also participating in the development of the independent workers' movement in the USSR.

Political and social experience are accumulating very rapidly in all the Baltic republics. Censorship has been gone for some time. Repression has been reduced to only a theoretical threat. The mass press reflects intense and fundamental political debate. There is a general disillusionment with the planned economy, but political and social attitudes DA are still quite fluid.

Negative experiences of privatization in other East European countries have begun to have an impact. And there is no reason to think illusions in privatization cannot fade as quickly as the hopes that the Western powers would support the national rights of the Baltic peoples.

At the same time, there is no reason to think that the fight for national rights is won in the Baltic. The likelihood is that it will become more complex, and that both the reformist "realism" of front leaders and the abstract legalism of the hard-line nationalists will create new problems, to say nothing of the fact that they lack an economic program for achieving their declared aim of thorough-going democratization.

Tra hers liament, etc. Nor will they concede to even

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LETIC Vi. AUTH