USSR
Lithuanian independence and the future of the Soviet Union SINCE the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet declared independence on March 11, the country has suffered what amounts to an invasion and steps taken towards the establishment of an occupation regime. Up to the time of writing events have developed more or less "peacefully" in a region for which the Western bourgeoisie feels a lot more sympathy than for the Azeris and the Central Asian "Muslim" peoples. But, despite the lower level of brutality, due to the requirements of foreign policy, the result is the same, and the same repressive forces — Ministry of the Interior and KGB troops - are at work in chev, at least this is what the latter wants us to think. The Kremlin hardliners are becoming more and more useful to the new President-Bonaparte; from being the obstacle to overcome they have become an all-purpose argument against every kind of radical.
Nonetheless Gorbachev has to use the carrot as well as the stick to preserve his credibility. Preaching moderation and orderly change, he is trying to make the Lithuanians look like hotheads. He is even trying to use democratic sounding arguments against them; this is the meaning of his demand that there should be a referendum in Lithuania, in line with the newly adopted constitutional law regulating the right of secession of Republics from the USSR.
In fact the right of self-determination is severely limited in the new law. A two thirds majority is required for independence, and there is then to be a transitional waiting period of five years before it is implemented. Compared to this awkward interpretation of the right of self-determination of nations, even bourgeois decolonization was often less restrictive.
Lithuania as in Azerbaijan.
SALAH JABER
AVING taken control of key
H economic installations and the majority of Lithuania's strategic nerve centres, the Kremlin troops have put the country into quarantine, while creating a climate of intimidation through the multiplication of roadblocks and searches. The hunt for "deserters"
who have refused to serve in the
Soviet army and the order to citisoviet army and the order to citzens of the republic to surrender their arms, demonstrates Moscow's firm intention to prevent the Lithuanians from having the real attributes of sovereignty. The only freedom that remains is that of political self-expression - the
Lithuanians are a people under house arrest.
They have thus discovered to their cost the limits of Gorbachev's tolerance. Many of them had illusions that what was happening in
Azerbaijan had no relevance to them, when in fact it was a message to all the nations on the Soviet periphery. These illusions were nourished by another great self- deception: that the imperialist
"Christian" West would do for
Lithuania at least what it had done for their brother Catholics in
Poland. The Lithuanians have had a bitter disillusionment in this respect. In fact Western capitals have hardly been able to conceal their irritation with the Sajudis leader Vytautas Landsbergis, this music teacher meddling in politics, whose quixotic behaviour is endangering relations between the great powers.
The three million ethnic Lithuanians
And on top of this there is the spectre of having to pay "indemnities" to Moscow.
According to Izvestia, the bill that the According to Izvestia the bill that the Union will present to Lithuania before it can leave could be some 12.5 billion roubles. And this still leaves out of account acts of revenge such as the demand that Lithuania should pay the full price for living in the republic do not count for much in comparison with what their challenge means for Moscow. They are opening the way for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the reversal of the liberalization process initiated by Gorba-
Political independence not economic autarchy
It is necessary here to take up the widespread idea that independence would be economically absurd, an easy alibi for people who do not want to support peoples who make such a choice. From this point of view, which assumes that a state must live only on its own resources, every state that does not cover at least a large part of the earth's surface is a reactionary absurdity. But it is obvious that political independence does not imply economic isolation. It is merely one of the conditions that would allow a sovereign and a free choice of the economic relations that a country wishes to establish with the rest of the world, including the countries that used to rule them. It still
(from the
Estonian cultural weekly
Reede)
remains necessary that these latter do not attempt to substitute economic suzerainty for their lost political power.
The Lithuanians would certainly
April 23, 1990 • #183 International Viewpoint receiving the raw materials and goods that it needs from the USSR (Lithuania gets
97% of its energy from the USSR). This is hardly the sort of settlement one would expect in an amicable divorce after 50 years of marriage.....
"Of course you can come out, but first you have to pay the fine for falling in"
USSR cooperation with a Soviet Union or a Russia well disposed towards them. A different attitude on Moscow's part might leave open the possibility that, after a period of independence, the Lithuanians would decide to rejoin a union refashioned on a genuinely equal confederal basis. Despite all the announcements of the end of Leninism, Lenin's remarks on this subject remain more relevant than ever.
In his testament of December 1922, he underlined that in the existing conditions: "It is quite natural that the 'freedom to secede from the union' by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is.'
In this situation, Lenin put forward proposals that now seem prophetic: "the strictest rules must be introduced on the use of the national language in the non-Russian republics of our union....A detailed code will be required, and only the nationals living in the republic in question can draw it up at all successfully. And then we cannot be sure in advance And then we cannot be sure in advance that as a result of this work we shall not take a step backward at our next Congress of Soviets, i.e. retain the union of Soviet socialist republics only for military and diplomatic affairs, and in all other respects restore full independence to the individual People's Commissariats."
Need to reestablish national units in the army
The only possible way today to maintain the USSR on an internationalist basis is to reshape it in the sense indicated by Lenin, including reestablishing the national units that made up the Soviet army until their dissolution by Stalin in 1938 into an ethnically mixed and thus Russian speaking and Russian dominated army. What has happened after March 11 in Lithuania shows the importance of this issue for real national sovereignty.
Unfortunately the option that is gaining ground in the Soviet Union today is not the internationalist one but a more narrow spirited nationalism such as that of the Sajudis leaders who have not even taken the trouble to coordinate their actions with that of the other Baltic states, not to speak of the other oppressed nationalities in the union, or with those of the Russian anti-bureaucratic opposition.
But the fundamental reason for all of this is the weakness of real internationalism in Russia itself, and the absence from the scene of a powerful independent workers movement capable of embodying such internationalism. The fundamental reason is that it is not the Leninists who are in command in Moscow but the "Great-Russian chauvinist, this rascal and 4 tyrant such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is."* International Viewpoint #183 • April 23, 1990
"Our programme is self-management and self-government"