Congress acts on Lithuania,
presidency as tensions rise

MOSCOW — Nerves were stretched to
the breaking point last week as Lithuania
unilaterally declated independence and the
Congress of Peoples’ Deputies met in emer-
gency session to make fundamental changes
to the constitution and elect a new executive
president. At least in its political aspect,
perestroika is moving into the endgame
phase.

The Lithuanian move, though not
entirely unexpected, was nevertheless a
shock and a disappointment to an
embattled Soviet leadership that has
already conceded that republic’s major
demands and promised to pass a law pro-
viding a clear and feasible constitutional
road to secession. Last week’s declaration
has forced the issue in a manner that Gor-
bachev quickly branded as “illegal and
incompetent”, and has come at the worst
possible time for almost everyone involved.

Joined by the representatives of unoffi-
cial Estonian and Latvian bodies — these
are skating on much thinner legal ice — the
Lithuanian parliament is demanding that
Moscow enter into immediate negotiations
on “restoring” the independence of the Bal-
tic states, lost as a result of the Hitler-Stalin
pact 50 years ago.

The Sajudis-dominated parliament has
already suspended Soviet law and replaced
it with a temporary declaration based upon
Lithuania’s 1938 constitution. Seemingly
unstoppable consequences have begun to
flow. Ethnically Lithuanian soldiers, for
instance, are reported deserting from the

‘Soviet army in droves.
Fred

FROM
MOSCOW

Though Sajudis leaders claim they acted
out of fear that the USSR’s new executive
presidency might limit their future field of
choices, it seems more likely that their haste
was an effort to galvanize their own political
will, and create “‘facts”’, in the face of almost
insurmountable social, historical and eco-
nomic obstacles (see box).

The impact of this has been to reverse the
process proposed by Gorbachev. He has
held out a law on secession, a legal, constitu-
tional set of procedures — like a divorce —
that would give time for alternate arrange-
ments, adjustments and settlements to be
worked out culminating in full separation.
Now it seems inevitable that this messy
transformation must take place without any
legal vehicles or constitutional order and in
an atmosphere of acrimony and mutual
intransigence.

The Soviet leadership has ruled out the
use of force in dealing with the breakaway
republic — significantly, it was _Yegor
Ligachev who went public to stress that
only political means would be employed —
and it seems likely that some sort of negotia-
tions will develop.

Early signs, however, suggest the man-
oeuvering may well turn nasty. Gorbachev
ruled out talks with Lithuania, saying: “We
negotiate only with foreign states.” A spe-
cial commission of the Supreme Soviet has
been struck to formulate an_ official
response. Meanwhile, Soviet officials have
been hinting that Lithuania may get its wish
of joining the world market just as abruptly
as it declared independence: a transferring
of accounts to hard currency payment at
world market prices would spell economic
cataclysm for the tiny republic.

8 e Pacific Tribune, March 26, 1990

At the session of
the Congress of Peo-
ples’ Deputies last
week, fundamental
constitutional pro-
visions were trans-

~ formed and the So-
viet political land-
scape assumed a
form that has the
look of make-or-
break permanence
about it.

The controversial
Articles Six and
Seven of the Brezh-
nev constitution,
which enshrined the
Communist Party of
the Soviet Union
(CPSU) as the “leading force” of Soviet
society were replaced by provisions that
pave the way for a multi-party system to
emerge and, more to the point, complete the
legal process of separating the Communist
Party from the Soviet state structure.

For the record; the new articles read as
follows: :

Article Six: “The CPSU and other party,
trade union, youth, social organizations, and
mass movements, shall take part through
their representatives elected to Soviets of
Peoples’ Deputies, as well as in other ways, in
shaping the policies of the Soviet state and in
managing state and public affairs”.

Article Seven: “All party and social org-
anizations and mass movements performing
functions envisaged in their programs and
rules shall act within the framework of the
constitution and Soviet laws. The creation
of, or activities by, parties, organizations or
movements that aim to forcibly change the
Soviet constitutional system and the integ-
rity of the socialist state, undermine its secur-
ity or foment social, ethnic or religious strife,
shall not be permitted.”

At a Central Committee plenum of the
CPSU just before the Soviet parliament
met, Gorbachev spoke in sharper and more
straightforward terms than ever before
about his vision of how the Communist
Party must be restructured and the role it
should play in the new Soviet Union.

He said: ““We regard the renewed Com-
munist party as a union of communists shar-
ing the same views and basing their activity
on the creative development of the ideas of
Marx, Engels and Lenin, a party of socialist
choice reflecting the interests of the working
class and all working people, a party which,
through its program, is working to consoli-
date Soviet multi-ethnic society.

“We declare that the CPSU stands on the
positions of internationalism and is open to
co-operation with Communist and workers’
parties, with socialist and social democratic,
liberal and national-democratic parties,
with all public forces and movements that
are for peace and social progress.”

Closely linked to the abolition of the par-

ty’s leading role in state affairs has been the .
- project to create an executive presidency

based roughly on the French and American
models. Controversy around this point has
been fierce, with radical “leftists” of the
inter-regional group — who only last
autumn were advocating the institution of a
strong presidency — spearheading — the
attack against the “concentration of poten-
tially authoritarian power in the hands of
one man.”

The most outspoken of these, historian
cum politician Yuri Afanasyev, called the
idea an “extremely gross and grave political
mistake.” He argued that treaties with those
republics that wished to stay in the USSR
should come first, and on the basis of pow-

a ee ee Oa ee a eee

GORBACHEV

LANDSBERGIS

ers delegated by those agreements, a USSR
‘presidency could be established.

The problem was not a lack of authority
in the present setup, he contended, ”but a
lack of trust in that authority.” He added
that the Gorbachev leadership is “once
again relying on power” to the detriment of
real solutions.

But in the kind of push for panaceas that
he has become famous for, Afanasyev also
called on the Congress to “renounce the
communist idea. Admit that the road trav-
ersed by this country over seven decades has
led it into the swamp”.

In any event, even the old Article Six
seems to have done better than the inter-
regional. group when it came to voting.
Some 164 diehards out of over 2,000 depu-
ties voted to retain the party’s monopoly of
power. Just 133 voted with Afanasyev to
oppose the executive presidency.

Gorbachev himself appears to have been
a late convert to the idea of a separate execu-
tive presidency, and embraced it only last
December as crises mounted all around and
existing structures of power proved too fee-
ble or ineffectual to deal with them.

As deputy Sergei Alexeyev noted, there is
an urgent need for a strong presidential
power to act as midwife at this critical stage
of perestroika. “There is a paralysis of
power in the country,” he said. “Old, obso-
lete political structures are rapidly losing
their power and authority, while the new
state bodies have not yet acquired it. In
these conditions the presidency is the only
effective method to transfer power from
party structures to state bodies.” The alter-
native, many fear, could be anarchy.

Said vice-president Anatoly Lukyanov:
“The institution of presidency is an organic
part of our efforts to complete the Soviet
state structure at a time when perestroika
has moved into its most crucial phase. It
should serve as a means to enhance the
efficiency of the entire mechanism of power,
stability and law and order in the country
.... We proceed from the premise that the
Soviet state needs authoritative legislative
bodies, a strong president, a vigorous
government and an independent judiciary.”

A last minute attempt to force the new
president to resign his party positions was
narrowly defeated, leaving leaders to
ponder the reality that opposition to, and
distrust of the party nomenklatura is run-
ning very high.

Although much of the party apparatus is
now set to gradually be de-politicized and
melt into what we in the West call the “civil
service,” the several-decades long legacy of
a single party fused with the state structure
is still proving to be a tough nut to crack.
Although most of the constitutional goals
are almost within grasp, fully breaking out
of that shell is going to be a long, hard and
perilous operation.

There is an old Russian saying that
when God wishes to destroy people, he
gives them what they’ve been praying
for.

Lithuania’s headlong rush to inde-
pendence is almost unparalleled as an act
of political will by a people with powerful
historical grievances and a soaring sense
of national awakening. But like all pray-
ers finally answered, it may carry an
unacceptable price tag: in this case con-
stitutional crisis, economic trauma and
possible political destabilization.

Lithuania is seeking to restore its
independence of a half century ago, yet it
itself has changed radically while the
world outside is altered beyond all
recognition. In 1940, nearly 74 per cent
of the Lithuanian population were
engaged in agriculture, while just seven
per cent worked in industry. Fifty years
within the USSR have seen industrial
output increase to 84 times the 1940 level,
while the population has undergone a
decisive sociological shift from country-
side to city — with all the attendant edu-
cational, social and psychological con-
sequences.

Lithuania’s economy today is inex-
tricably integrated with that of the
USSR. Of 103 key Soviet industrial sec-
tors, Lithuania imports from 101 and
exports to 83 of them. Lithuania meets
75 per cent of its energy requirements
from other regions of the USSR (and
pays 30 rubles for a tonne of petroleum
versus the $110 (U.S.) it would cost on
the world market). Last year, within the
Soviet integrated economic complex,
Lithuania imported 7.5 billion rubles
worth of products and exported 6 billion
rubles worth.

Soviet authorities say many of these
industries belong to the centre, and will
be dismantled and shipped out of
Lithuania in the event of separation. In
any case, isolated from their traditional
sources of materials and markets, they
may prove worse than useless.

With some 80 per cent of its popula-
tion ethnically Lithuanian, Lithuania is
one of the best-placed of Soviet republics
to go for an exclusivist national solution.
Yet it does have significant minorities,
including Poles, Jews and Germans, who
are also historically indigenous to the
territory and many of whom — particu-
larly the Poles — are becoming increas-
ingly restive. Another significant minor-
ity, immigrant Slavic workers, have also
shown deep alarm at the rise of Lithua-
nian nationalism. Moscow says that if
Lithuania creates a refugee problem —
which in the absence of fully democratic
solutions it will do — it will be held
financially liable for the consequences.

Lithuania’s borders present another
potential problem. Though the Lithua-
nian parliament has loudly denounced
the secret deal of the Hitler-Stalin pact,
which led to the loss of independence, it
has been silent over the undeniable fact
that Lithuania itself was one of the minor
beneficiaries of that accord.

Under the terms of the 1939 secret
protocol, Lithuania received its present
capital, Vilnius, at the expense of Poland.
It was also given the German port of
Memel (Kleipedas) after World War II.

Should instability set into the Euro-
pean system again — and the Lithuani-
ans are contributing mightily to such an
outcome — Lithuania may well find
| itself beset with territorial demands from
Poland, Germany and Byelorussia.

— FW.