Soviet Union: The Edge of Darkness

By Bruce W. Nelan

New concrete walls seal off the narrow cobblestone streets leading to the Latvian parliament in Riga's Old Town. Four barricades block access to the small square in front of the building. Milling around bonfires near the parliament's entrance, wearing combat gear and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, are militiamen loyal to the republic's separatist government. At other bonfires in nearby Cathedral Square, hundreds of Latvians stand vigil through the night, listening to passionate music and somber poetry blaring from loudspeakers.

The scenes suggested a forward outpost of civilization girding itself for an impending attack by barbarians -- and such an impression would not be far from the truth. Early last week, without warning, a squad of thuggish special forces from the Soviet Interior Ministry, known as black berets, attacked the Latvian Interior Ministry. In a 30-min. exchange of machine-gun and rifle fire, they killed two Latvian militiamen, a well-known filmmaker and a bystander.

The attack in Riga came only seven days after army paratroops had seized Lithuania's television center in Vilnius, killing 15 unarmed demonstrators. There too the republican parliament has been turned into a fortress, with a 10-ft.-high concrete wall in front and a deep antitank ditch along one side. Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis has been holed up in the parliament building since the current crisis began in mid-January.

/ Besieged as they are, these structures are coming to symbolize the failure of Soviet reform. Latvians and Lithuanians, along with appalled observers inside and outside the U.S.S.R., are convinced that the crisis between Moscow and the republics is not over so long as troops range the cities and independence-minded legislatures hide behind barricades. The breakaway republics are under no illusion that they can defeat the Kremlin, but they still desperately hope that they can negotiate a peaceful solution.

That may prove wishful thinking. Although the Soviet military's bloodletting in the Baltics touched off a 100,000-strong protest march in Moscow and a stream of warnings from abroad, the Kremlin has not backed down. Its armed forces continue to rumble through the tiny republics' streets, seizing buildings and striking threatening attitudes. The Interior and Defense ministries have announced that the national police and the army will begin joint patrols next month in all major cities, apparently including the Baltic capitals. They claimed the move was intended to fight the increase in violent crime, but the heavily armed patrols will obviously be available for any tasks Moscow assigns them.

In spite of it all, the democratically elected Baltic governments refuse to compromise on their demands for independence. A lopsided stalemate is setting in.

Given the stubbornly peaceful nature of the Balts' defiance, the next move is up to Moscow. The present face-off is untenable for President Mikhail Gorbachev, since it leaves him open to attack from old-line communists for not bringing the rebels to heel and from reformers for using force to halt nonviolent political activity. In addition, other potential defectors from the Union might begin to wonder whether Gorbachev's government lacks the will to carry through with military repression.

How does Gorbachev get out of his dilemma? He can hardly wave the separatists on their way out of the Union, a course he has fought for years and one which his army and KGB backers would veto. But a military overthrow of the elected governments would bring disaster to his reforms and his own political future. He, like the Baltic leaders, must be asking himself whether any compromise solution is still possible.

One of Gorbachev's biggest concerns is to maintain his liberal image abroad and the West's willingness to support him in that role with economic aid and cooperation treaties. Last week the European Parliament blocked a billion- dollar package of food aid, and the U.S. Congress passed nonbinding resolutions calling on President Bush to consider economic sanctions against Moscow.

The Soviet President tried to head off actions like those with a surprise press conference to assure doubters that he has not changed his mind about perestroika. To underscore the point, he arrived at the Foreign Ministry press center accompanied by Alexander Yakovlev and Yevgeni Primakov, two former advisers noted for their reformist views -- although neither holds an official position any longer.

Looking tired and tense, Gorbachev offered a strange mixture of contrition and combativeness. He extended his condolences to the families of those who had been killed in the Baltics and pledged the shootings would be "thoroughly investigated." But he still denied responsibility for the violence and ridiculed the idea it had resulted from "mythical orders from higher authorities." His main theme was familiar: nationalist leaders in the Baltics were persisting in "unlawful acts" that created a situation in which "these kinds of clashes can flare up." If the republics are set on secession, he said, they have to pursue it on the basis of Soviet laws. But appeals to the armed forces to use force, he declared, are also "inadmissible in the political struggle."

The muddled message offered little more than a respite in the tension. But Gorbachev does have a technically legal means at hand for breaking the deadlock. Citing a breakdown of public order, he could impose direct presidential rule from Moscow and disband the local governments, a move that would, if backed up by force, deprive the independence movement of an official voice. This might have been the original scheme behind the appearance of the black berets and paratroops. Detachments of the special-purpose militia had been roaming Riga, terrorizing the citizenry and generating a sense of lawlessness. Last week Interior Minister Boris Pugo agreed to call them off.

Now at least a short pause for negotiations could be in the works. After a "constructive and friendly" meeting with Gorbachev in the Kremlin, Latvian President Anatolijs Gorbunovs said "there is no basis for any concern that presidential rule could be imposed in Latvia today or tomorrow." Gorbachev, he said, had agreed there was still room for a peaceful solution.

If so, what might that solution be? All three Baltic states take the position that they were illegally absorbed into the U.S.S.R. in 1940 and are not part of the Union. They refuse to sign Gorbachev's proposed Union Treaty or consider anything short of full independence. For his part, Gorbachev insists that the Baltics must accept their current status and start the secession process on the basis of Soviet law -- which technically permits independence but makes it almost impossible in practice.

"The kind of compromise that Gorbachev wants -- that we adhere to the Soviet constitution -- is impossible," says Egidijus Bickauskas, Lithuania's chief representative in Moscow. "We will not back down on our declaration of independence." If presidential rule is decreed, adds Valdis Berzins of the Latvian Foreign Ministry, "the republics won't follow it. You may not call it a military dictatorship, but that is what it would be."

At the same time, Gorbachev must fend off the increasingly popular stance of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who warned last week that the country was being pushed "back toward the darkest times in recent history." Yeltsin is trying to outflank and deflate the central authorities in Moscow with his own alternative to the Union Treaty. Gorbachev's version keeps most power in the central government's hands and makes no provision for secession. Yeltsin calls instead for a negotiated union among four republics -- Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan -- containing most of the country's people and resources. Other republics would be free to join if they wish.

Still another conflict broke out in the midst of the Baltic crisis when Gorbachev suddenly decreed that 50-ruble and 100-ruble bank notes were no longer legal tender. Overnight he managed to distract the nation with a confiscation not seen since Khrushchev's day. In one swipe, more than one- third of the 136 billion rubles in circulation were taken out. The idea, which Western economists regarded as pointless without accompanying free- market measures, was to soak up part of the immense "ruble overhang" of billions in savings that are unspent because there is nothing in the stores to buy. Officials said the measure was aimed primarily at black marketeers, but ordinary citizens will bear the brunt. Unless prices are decontrolled and competition introduced into the market, says Ed Hewett, a Brookings Institution expert on Soviet economics, "it makes no sense at all."

Soviet citizens were given three days to exchange up to 1,000 rubles ($50 to $1,600, depending on the exchange rate) in big bills for smaller ones, but banks and enterprises had neither sufficient forms nor manpower to cope with the crush. Four republics -- Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Armenia -- announced that they would extend the deadline for several days. The Soviet State Bank immediately declared the extensions illegal and threatened to revoke the licenses of the republics' banks. Said a Muscovite who identified himself only as Alexei: "Elsewhere people rob banks. This seems to be the only country where it's the bank that robs the people."

Such piecemeal "reform" has become the hallmark of Gorbachev's perestroika. In almost every sphere he has failed to be decisive or consistent in implementing reform plans. He has been unwilling to move fully into a free- market economy, preferring to tinker with the centralized planning machinery in hopes of making it more efficient. He has been willing to liberalize the political life of the country but not to allow any of its separatists to break away. He has alienated not only the separatists but also the traditionalists, who accuse him of "betrayal" for failing to completely carry through on crushing the independence drive in the republics.

While he is reluctant to force out the Baltic governments because of the price he would pay abroad, Gorbachev has accepted the use of the military fist in an attempt to intimidate them. He is probably under pressure to go much further by the hardliners who now surround him: his original perestroika team has been replaced by a Vice President from the Communist Party hierarchy, a KGB man and a combat general at the Interior Ministry, and an unreconstructed cold warrior at the head of the KGB.

Analysts wonder whether Gorbachev has lost his nerve or returned to his true roots. Says Yuri Shchekochikhin, a reform member of parliament: "He should understand that they have already made a dictator out of him. He has refused to put down the military-industrial complex, and his popularity has fallen throughout the country. He should make his final choice. Either he is an imperialist or a democrat."

In fact, he has never claimed to be a democrat, preferring to describe himself as a loyal communist determined to return to the policies of Lenin. But if he is simply looking for a way out of his cul-de-sac in the Baltics, there is one he could use. He could identify them as a special case, republics that were kidnapped by Stalin, and allow their departure -- accompanied by treaties on defense and economic links that would make them in effect another Finland. He could then say to other potential secessionists that, as members of the Union forged by Lenin, they do not meet those conditions. By cutting his losses with the Baltics, Gorbachev might be able to draw a firmer line around the Soviet heartland.

There is little chance that Gorbachev will choose this way out. Western Sovietologists read him as a leader dedicated to preserving his empire. It seems to them he has concluded that if he gives the Balts such an opening, the other rebellious republics will rush for it as well. And even if the President could bring himself to accept a little secession, the army and KGB would not. Now that he has been deserted by the reformers, he must rely on the men in uniform if he wants to stay in power. One of his advisers, Georgi Shakhnazarov, warned that if Gorbachev gave in to separatists he would be overthrown and replaced by a military dictatorship.

No matter how much he must depend on the armed forces, Gorbachev will have to think carefully before turning to martial law in the republics that defy him. All 15 of the republics -- with giant Russia in the lead -- are in some ways loosening the ties that bind them to Moscow, and despite the pervasiveness of the security forces, it is not clear they could hold them all in check at the same time. "If they have to crack down in lots of places," says an analyst in Washington, "that could create a revolutionary situation." The Soviet people can still be frightened by threats from the Kremlin, but the period of reform has given them new courage.

Gorbachev's political genius so far has been his ability to swerve from left to right, to set things up so he is always the leader between the extremes, the man of moderation. He no doubt intends to continue that pattern by trying to balance the Baltics' demand for independence with the dark threat of violence from the reactionaries. In that effort, the most ominous question is whether there is any ground in the middle left for him to stand on.

With reporting by James Carney and John Kohan/Moscow and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington