Lithuanians Try to Assert ‘Sovereignty’ : Reformers’ Founding Congress Challenges Soviet Authority

With a dramatic surge of long-suppressed nationalism, Lithuanian political activists on Sunday launched a powerful new grass-roots movement to reassert Lithuanian “sovereignty” over this small Soviet republic on the Baltic Sea.

In a series of resolutions that challenged, or condemned outright, almost every aspect of nearly five decades of Soviet rule here, delegates at the founding congress of the Lithuanian Reform Movement called for control over Lithuania’s political system, its economy and natural resources and its educational and cultural institutions to be vested totally in local bodies of democratically elected representatives--and no longer in appointed Communist Party organizations responsible largely to Moscow.

As excited crowds numbering tens of thousands filled the streets waving the yellow, green and scarlet flag of once-independent Lithuania, speaker after speaker at the congress demanded an end to what they called the Soviet “occupation” of the republic.

Only when the Soviet Union has renounced the pact with Nazi Germany under which it occupied the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940, they contended, can Lithuania’s problems be solved.

“We are here to say to ourselves and to others that this situation cannot and should not be tolerated,” said Justinas Marcinkevicius, one of the founders of Sajudis, as the group is known from the Lithuanian word for movement.

Bolder than the demands advanced earlier this month by similar groups in Estonia and Latvia, the congress’ resolutions emphasized Lithuanians’ strong desire to manage their own affairs, arguing not only that past Soviet rule has brought them catastrophe but that current Soviet rule is now slowing the pace of reforms here.

Pledge of Cooperation

The Communist Party, which is committed to “socialist pluralism” and shared political power under Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform program, responded with a pledge of cooperation, and underscored it with a series of good-will gestures, including the return to the Roman Catholic Church of the city’s cathedral after nearly 40 years of use as a museum of atheism.

Algirdas Brazauskas, appointed first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party last Thursday, told the congress that the party under Gorbachev is committed to “developing and expanding a new type of democracy.”

Quoting Gorbachev, Brazauskas described Sajudis as “the driving force of reform . . . a mighty life-giving force” in Lithuania.

“We should not be frightened by the fact that the forms of activities and viewpoints of Sajudis and the party differ to a certain extent,” Brazauskas said to the applause of the delegates. “Our understanding of basic principles is the same, and our cooperation can be fruitful.”

He pledged that there would be multi-candidate elections at all levels within the next year and that the system of elected councils, known as soviets, would form the basis of government under Gorbachev’s reforms.

“We used to have a slogan, ‘The will of the party is the will of the people,’ but we must revise that to ‘The will and the plan of the people is the will of the party,’ ” he said to loud cheers.

Brazauskas also apologized for the party’s initial refusal to deal with Sajudis--with 180,000 members in 1,000 grass-roots groups, it is already nearly as large as the party--and described the early hostility as being among the political “mistakes” of his predecessor, who was abruptly retired last week.

But the new party leader made clear in a second speech to the closing session of the congress that there are still limits to the new political activism here.

Saddened by Speeches

“Some of the speeches I have heard here have saddened me, or rather moved me,” he said. “How can we solve such things in a free manner? We must work in a rational and businesslike way.”

Cautioned by Brazauskas, the delegates then rejected a draft resolution that would have reserved Lithuania’s right of “secession” from the Soviet Union, although this is theoretically guaranteed by the present Soviet constitution, and adopted more moderate language, close to that of the Communist Party itself.

Lithuania’s relations with the other Soviet republics and the central government, the final resolution said, “should be based on the Leninist principles of federalism, national equality and self-determination” as laid down by V. I. Lenin, founder of the Soviet state.

Other resolutions, aimed at asserting Lithuanian “sovereignty,” called for the republic’s economic independence within the Soviet Union, genuinely free parliamentary elections, establishment of Lithuanian citizenship, curbs on immigration and abolition of privileges for Communist Party officers.

Moving quickly to calm the political passions aroused by Sajudis, the party did make a series of unprecedented concessions to Lithuanian nationalism over the weekend, promising to repatriate all Lithuanians still living in remote parts of the Arctic and Siberia where they were exiled for political activities, to rehabilitate all those jailed or exiled during the Stalinist era and to review the cases of others now serving prison terms for “anti-Soviet” activities.

Ecology Effort Promised

Brazauskas also promised greater efforts to protect Lithuania’s fragile ecology and to ensure the safety of a controversial nuclear power plant in the republic--two of the most volatile issues here.

The two-day congress, attended by more than 5,000 observers and broadcast live on television and radio, became a national catharsis--an emotional outpouring that reflected upon all of Lithuania’s unhealed wounds over the years, its fears of annihilation, its hopes of revival.

“Our common work, creativity, concord and patience must revive and nourish all that is still alive,” co-founder Marcinkevicius said at the opening, “and we must rekindle all that which is not extinguished in our state, in our nation and in our people.”

The debates were often stormy Sunday as moderates and militants battled over how far Sajudis should go in condemning past policies, in asserting Lithuania’s sovereignty, in demanding autonomy from Moscow and in threatening secession if the republic did not get all the powers it wants to manage its own affairs.

But the prospect of a “national rebirth,” as Sajudis described its principal goal, filled Lithuania with tremendous excitement and joy.

Hundreds of thousands filled Vilnius’ main Gediminas Square and surrounding streets on Saturday night after a candlelight procession through the capital, and they stayed until 3 a.m., singing and dancing and reciting poetry.

On Sunday morning, Cardinal Vincentas Sladkevicius, the chairman of the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Bishops Conference, celebrated Mass on the steps of St. Casimir Cathedral for 20,000 people who had gathered for the first outdoor service there in nearly half a century. And, like the congress, it was broadcast live by state television and radio--probably the first Roman Catholic service ever televised in the Soviet Union.