Lithuanian referendum rebuffs Gorbachev, affirms independence

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1991 Soviet troops in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The campaign against the Lithuanian national democratic movement by Gorbachev and the neo-Stalinists has been dealt a sharp setback. In a referendum held on Feb. 9, over 91 percent of the voters and 76.3 percent of the total population of the republic voted for independence. About 84 percent of the population participated.

Lithuania declared its independence in March 1990, only a few weeks before passage of Gorbachev's new law on secession from the USSR which, among other things, requires a referendum as well as a waiting period.

Moscow responded to the Lithuanian declaration at the time by arguing that it was undemocratic for the republic's Supreme Soviet to take such a step without directly consulting the population through a referendum.

The leadership of the national democratic movement, Sajudis, which holds a large majority in the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, argued that since their country was illegally incorporated into the USSR, they did not grant Moscow any right to determine the conditions by which it could withdraw from the forced union.

In fact, the Soviet constitution and the tradition from the first revolutionary government under Lenin assured the republics ...WOSA formed (continued from page come less sectarian in the recent period."

An example of WOSA's approach to build a unified, non-sectarian liberation movement is its reaction to the so-called tribal township wars regularly reported in the Western press. Newspapers such as the New York Times describe such violence as "Black on Black" or between the ANC and the rightwing Inkatha movement based among the Zulu-speaking Blacks.

WOSA, in its newspaper VUKANI BASEBENZI, explains that the source of the "tribal" violence is the apartheid-capitalist system itself which is based on the "hostel/migrant labor system." That system is based on the Bantustans homelands policy of influx control, which means jobs and accommodations divided along racial, "ethnic," social and economic lines.

(The Bantustans were set up by the apartheid state as homelands for the Black majority on less than 13 percent of the country's land. No country but South Africa has ever recognized these phony "nations.")

Call for united action VUKANKI BASEBENZI explains: "The divisions and brutality forced on us by the hostel/migrant labor system have been exploited by many elements. In the case of the recent violence these are mainly Inkatha, the unrestricted right secession.

New totalitarians?

Since the confrontation in the spring of 1990, the Soviet press has been trying to brand the Lithuanian movement as "new totalitarians," accusing them of political repression against the Moscow loyalist faction of the Lithuanian Communist Party (CP), of oppressing the nonLithuanian populations living in the republic and "provocations" against the Soviet forces stationed in the republic.

The so-called independent Commmunist Party has argued a similar line, protesting that Sajudis is trying to exclude it from political life. The independent CP, however, has openly sought an alliance with the Sajudis "moderates," represented by former premier Prunskiene, the leading proponent of negotiations with Moscow.

At the outset of the present confrontation, which started several weeks ago, the majority of Sajudis deputies rejected both Prunskiene's line of price rises and conciliation with the Soviet authorities.

The Feb. 9 referendum showed that nearly all the Lithuanian population remained determined, despite pressures and threats, to achieve independence and that a large proportion of the non-Lithuanians preferred to support independence rather than harken to the siren songs of Great Russian police and organized vigilantes both black and white....But, whatever the underlying and immediate causes of the violence, it has taken the form of an anti-working class pogrom. This only serves the interests of the state, especially the right wing, the far right and the policies of Inkatha.....

"WOSA suggests that the only way forward is for ALL the organizations committed to liberation and transformation of our society (i.e., ANC, AZAPO [Azanian Peoples Organization], NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] PAC [Pan Africanist Congress], WOSA, COSATU [Congress of South African Trade Unions], NACTU [National Council of Trade Unions], SACP) to come together to discuss ways and means of defending the communities and resisting all provocations from whatever sourci.

"WOSA members and supporters will join all Defense Committees genuinely committed to defend the community.

"WOSA supports all progress towards the abolition and dismantling of the "hostel/migrant labor system' with all that this implies; i.e., a policy of decent housing for all, no forced separation of families, an end to the bantustan system; job opportunities for all; no more ethnically based jobs, accommodation or wages."

"Our policy," Robert concluded, "is for Unity in Action. We will work with all forces to that end. We believe the strongest form of defense is mass-based and independent working-class organizations rooted in the working class. chauvinism, old Polish neo-Stalinism..

Of course, pockets of opposition remain. In the Sneckus region, for example, where there is a concentration of nonLithuanians, only 15 percent voted.

The right to vote was determined by the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet's citizenship law of November 1989. Thus, persons arriving in the republic after that date and Soviet military forces stationed there were excluded from the referendum. This represents a sharp point of contention for Moscow, which has stubbornly maintained that the republics not make distincIndependence rally in Vilnius tions among Soviet citizens.

However, the USSR military forces in the Baltic republics remain under the thumb of neo-Stalinist officers and are numerous enough to to distort election results, particularly in Latvia and Estonia, which are smaller than Lithuania and have larger non-native populations.

In Latvia, for example, where the largest numbers of serving and retired Soviet military personnel are concentrated, the native people make up only about 52 percent of the population. The numerical weight of the military populations is one reason why the Baltic national movements have reacted negatively to Gorbachev's propos als for referenda.

Moreover, the Soviet military forces have been called into service to spread propaganda for Moscow and its local agents of the loyalist CP, which Lithuanians commonly call the "night party." In the confrontation in the spring of 1990, Soviet army helicopters dropped leaflets arguing for the night party's line of a "renewed union."

In the present crisis, Soviet army helicopters dropped leaflets from the shadowy "Civic Committee" calling on people to boycott the referendum. This organization, made up of Moscow loyalists, has presented itself even as a counterpower to the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet.

Referendum in Latvia

On February 9, the Council of the Latvian national democratic movement, the Popular Front of Latvia, called for a referendum on the question of independence and how to reestablish Latvian statehood. Unlike the Lithuanian movement, it opposed any restriction on the right to take part in the vote. At the same time, it called for a boycott of the referendum on maintaining the union that Gorbachev intends to hold in March.

The confrontation between Moscow and the Baltic republics is continuing to sharpen. The democratic movement in the Soviet Union has shown its awareness of what is at issue by mobilizing mass protests on behalf of the Baltic peoples.

There is no mistaking the meaning of the fact that all the forces inclined to repressive solutions, neo-Stalinism, and chauvinism in the USSR, are arrayed against the Baltic peoples.

Moreover, despite certain inclinations on the part of the Baltic nationalists to look for support in the West and a rebound effect against Stalinism identified with socialism, there has been a clear dynamic of radicalization since the Lithuanian declaration of independence, when the embattled Sajudis found that its only real allies were Russian democrats and the organizations of the other oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union.

The present confrontation, in fact, began with a rejection of a concrete program of market reforms that was threatening to divide and demoralize the working people of Lithuania. The sharper the confrontation becomes between the national democratic movements and the Soviet bureaucracy, the more clearly the radical democratic logic of this struggle appears, including on the economic level. The same logic led the leader of the Ukrainian movement, Ivan Drach, to denounce the bureaucracy's market reforms at his organization's congress in October in these terms:

"In the so-called 'regulated socialist market' programs, the government has camouflaged a stili crueler exploitation of the working people. There is only one innovation. Today everyone is going to be forced by 'economic conditions' to snatch their miserable ration from the mouths of their neighbors. Treacherously, they [the "party- state'] are planning a war of all against all."

Drach went on to say: "We are making every effort to prevent the reform of nationalized ownership, when the party top echelon and its Siamese twin-organized crime—wants to convert it into their own private property.

"The real facts and the laws that the party, Komsomol and economic magnates adopt in the Supreme Soviets in Moscow and Kiev confirm that this legislative process of converting the party-state-feudal socialists into the first social-capitalists, industrialists and bankers has already started. Some 90 percent of the working people have still not gotten any ownership, and the president has already issued an order declaring the inviolability of property in order to defend the property of the party mafia."

The workers and socialist movements, therefore, have an interest and a duty to support the struggle of the Baltic peoples for national freedom, not only for the sake of democratic rights—without which working people cannot gain control of their fate-but also in order to fight effectively the bureaucracy's program of driving all of the peoples of the Soviet Union back to capitalist barbarism.

The bureaucracy's claim that the national movements are forces for capitalist restoration, regardless of ideologies and illusions that may temporarily gain a hold in these movements, is the exact opposite of the real process.

It is the Soviet bureaucracy itself that is the champion of exploitation and oppression, of capitalism, and all it implies. To the extent that the national movements struggle against it, they have to fight for more and more radical democracy, and therefore for the economic rights of working people as well, for a democratic international order that can only be based on socialist economic principles.