3 From Politburo Seek to Calm Restive Baltic Republics

Three members of the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling Politburo flew to the country’s restive Baltic republics on Friday in an effort to stem the growing opposition there to proposed changes in the nation’s political system.

Their mission reflected the threat posed by the resurgent nationalism of the once-independent Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, particularly the threat to the reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“You cannot depart from the reality that has risen around us,” Viktor M. Chebrikov, a party secretary, told factory workers Friday in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, warning that if they take their demands for autonomy too far, they could “lose everything else.”

Formerly head of the Soviet Committee for State Security, the KGB, Chebrikov now leads a party commission in charge of constitutional and legal reforms. He urged acceptance of Gorbachev’s reforms, although they fall well short of popular demands in the Baltics and would reduce the republics’ nominal rights.

Vadim M. Medvedev, who directs the party’s ideological commission, traveled to the Latvian capital of Riga. Nikolai N. Slyunkov, another secretary of the party’s policy-making Central Committee, who is in charge of economic and social affairs, went to Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Both sought to urge moderation in popular demands there for radical reforms of the country’s political system.

The focus of all three, however, was the growing opposition in the Baltics to Gorbachev’s proposed constitutional changes, including the creation of a powerful state president at the head of a strengthened national legislature.

While they support the overall direction of Gorbachev’s reforms, radicals in the three Baltic republics want greater autonomy, and they even talk of a sort of “sovereignty” that would give them effective independence within the Soviet Union.

Heckling and Questions

Medvedev, speaking to workers in Riga, said that with “socialist pluralism” the party and government will correct the “distortions” that had arisen over the years; but like Chebrikov, he warned them against pressing too hard, going too far, moving too fast.

He argued that their ambitions must be “subordinated to the interests of society as a whole in the conditions of perestroika, “ as Gorbachev calls his program of political, economic and social reforms.

Slyunkov told meetings in Vilnius that the reforms require “consistency, purposefulness and tolerance” and that the party’s plans for bolder and broader changes require successful first steps.

All three heard more questions--some of it outright heckling--than applause, according to local journalists in the three capitals, but their trips were interpreted as a response by the party leadership to local concerns over the proposed constitutional changes.

In Estonia, Chebrikov warned that their demands for near-absolute economic autonomy could endanger the whole country because of its mutual interdependence and years of tightly controlled central planning.

“He spoke very strong words against economic independence,” an Estonian journalist commented in Tallinn. “His words sounded like a grim warning to people here.”

Estonians have complained, as have Lithuanians and Latvians, that their wealth has been drained to subsidize poorer regions of the country and that many Russians have moved there to benefit from the higher living standards that result from greater labor productivity and organizational efficiency.

The Estonian Popular Front, a new grass-roots political movement, has criticized Gorbachev’s constitutional changes as failing to protect national rights, and its opposition has led the Estonian Supreme Soviet, the republic’s Parliament, to schedule a special session on Wednesday to debate the proposed changes.

More Authority for Moscow

Although the proposals create an executive presidency and a new Parliament, they also give central authorities in Moscow the right to overrule local governments and to exert greater control over many economic issues.

Further opposition to the measures has come from the Latvian People’s Front, and the Lithuanian Reform Movement has scheduled a rally on Sunday to debate the question.

The party’s 12-member Politburo said Friday that a special Central Committee meeting would be held next year to consider these and other issues raised by the country’s various nationalities and ethnic groups.

“As is known, other large-scale tasks are intended to be fulfilled at subsequent stages of political transformation,” the Politburo said following a regular weekly meeting. “These include harmonizing relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the (country’s) integral republics.”