S OVIET MILITARY forces gave Shved at least a first installment on his demands even before the demonstration. On Sunday, March 25, paratroopers occupied two schools in Vilnius belonging to the Lithuanian Communist Party, supposedly to safeguard the rights of the Moscow loyalist minority, in the first direct military intervention in the affairs of a Communist Party since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On Monday, they occupied the headquarters of the party committee in the port of Klaipeda and the former political institute of Kaunas. On Tuesday, March 27, they invaded the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian party.
Also, in the early morning of March 27, the Soviet military defended "the constitutional rights of Soviet citizens" by invading two psychiatric hospitals that had offered shelter to youths who had left the Soviet army claiming their freedom as citizens of an independent country. About 20 were brutally dragged away, reportedly leaving trails of blood.
In the aftermath of these attacks, the Soviet authorities ordered foreigners and journalists to leave Lithuania, isolating the country still further. Telephone communication outside the country was already cut, except for the phones of the Lithuanian government itself. It appears at the same time that mail connections, not only with Lithuania but with the other Baltic republics have also been interrupted. Moscow plays cat-and-mouse game
Ironically just before these brutal and arbitrary actions, the leaders of the Lithuanian government claimed that Moscow was becoming more amenable. The catand-mouse game of crackdown and intimations of reasonableness continued. The Lithuanian leaders appear to have illusions not only in the willingness of Gorbachev to let them go but in the support of the Western governments. At the same time as Moscow was stepping up the pressure on his government and the Lithuanian people, the chair of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, Sajudis leader Vytautas Landsbergis, began making bitter statements about being betrayed by the West.
However, if the West has betrayed Lithuania, this is not the first time. The Westem powers were prepared to sacrifice their Baltic allies after the first world war and before the second as well. Even during the period of the civil war in the Soviet Union, they were interested fundamentally in restoring a powerful Russian capitalist state, and whatever alliances they made with the Baltic nationalists were secondary.
As for the policy of the real decisionmakers in the US government, it is quite clear. Washington's primary interest is in maintaining the détente and deals with
USSR West gives tacit support to Moscow's attack on Lithuania NEO-STALINISTS demonstrating against Lithuanian independence in Vilnius March 27 made it clear what they expected from Gorbachev in his new role as president of the
USSR. Ladislav Shved, second secretary of the Moscow loyalist rump of the Lithuanian Communist Party said that the Kremlin chief "must protect us and defend the constitutional rights of Soviet citizens in Lithuania. He should take power," that is, administer the republic directly. This demand for direct rule from Moscow has also been raised by neo-Stalinist and
Russian social chauvinist organizations in Estonia. GERRY FOLEY
Gorbachev. It is not going to endanger that for the sake of small peoples within the USSR, much less for the right of self-determination, which is hardly one of the cardinal principles of Washington's foreign policy.
An analysis in the March 27 International Herald Tribune by Bill Keller of the New York Times Service, close to the US State Department, stressed the isolation of the Lithuanians. "Lithuanians have also been largely disappointed in their hopes of support from the outside world, especially countries like the United States, which never officially accepted Lithuania's forcible incorporation in the Soviet Union."
Keller quoted "politicians in Moscow" as saying that "the Lithuanians themselves alienated potential allies by their aloofness, their disregard for the fears of ethnic groups and their romantic, onegreat-leap approach to independence." He went on to write "Moscow has compounded the republic's isolation by the shrewd use of propaganda to raise doubts about whether the independence government is rcally democratic." It is hard to believe that anyone could consider Moscow's response to the Lithuanian declaration of independence as "shrewd propaganda" unless they already had a strong prejudice against Lithuanian national aspirations.
Keller wrote: "Most legislators have been hostile or lukewarm to the Lithuanian declaration, including members of the opposition Inter-Regional Deputies Group, which has often been allied with Baltic parliamentarians in campaigning for greater democracy and economic pluralism."
It is unfortunately undisputable that Russian social chauvinism goes very deep into the moderate opposition in Russia and even into circles that claim to be revolutionary and Marxist. Keller quoted a "democratic" member of the Congress of Pcople's Deputies, Anatoli A. Sobchak, as saying: "By actions such as these, which are not always very well thought through, they are endangering the possibilities of democratic change in the country as a whole."
Self-determination and democracy
Sobchak evidently thought that it was the duty of the Lithuanians to subordinate their national aspirations to the struggle to democratize the Soviet Union as a whole. He got things a bit backwards. Unless democrats in the Soviet Union as a whole, and especially among the dominant nationality, defend the right of sclfdetermination of the oppressed peoples unconditionally they cannot fight effcctively for democracy even on their own turf.
It is notable that at the same time as Moscow escalated its pressure on Lithuania, Pravda of March 26 carried a long unsigned article denouncing the dangers of political mobilizations, so-called "mitingovanie" or the proliferation of mass meetings. It gave an example of an unlikely leaflet, supposedly saying: "Organize sabotage, arson, diversions, terrorist acts. Organize mass disorders, unauthorized mass mectings. Destroy the means of mass and government communication. Destroy the armed forces. Today everything is useful that destabilizes the power of the Communists; make the situation ungovernable." 3
The article went on to say, among other April 9, 1990 • #182 International Viewpoint
USSR things: "Destructive forces are trying to take advantage of the situation that has developed in the country. Under the flag of turning over power to the 'selfmanaged' society, they aim to seize power by outright undemocratic means, through the strong pressure of mass meetings, through calls to the use of the so-called 'round table,' at which representatives of the government and the opposition are supposed to sit down immediately."