Lithuania Backs Down on ‘Sovereignty’ Conflict

The Parliament of the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania backed away from a direct confrontation with the Kremlin on Friday and postponed a vote on constitutional amendments that would have declared its “sovereignty” and claimed the right to veto national laws there.

After an impassioned speech by Algirdas Brazauskas, the Lithuanian Communist Party’s popular new first secretary, members of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, the republic’s Parliament, also decided not to oppose as undemocratic proposed changes in the country’s national political system, but instead to work for their improvement before they are adopted.

“Although we have the noble aim of full sovereignty (for Lithuania), we cannot solve this problem today or even in a month’s time,” Brazauskas told the Lithuanian Parliament.

Daylong Debate

As a tense nation watched the televised daylong debate, fearing that a further surge of Baltic nationalism would bring a political, even constitutional, crisis to the entire country, Brazauskas urged Lithuanians to be realistic and sober-minded about what they want and how they can best achieve it.

“We have no right to mislead the Lithuanian people and give them what would be a one-day wonder,” Brazauskas said. He will now head a special commission to examine revision of the Lithuanian constitution.

On Wednesday, the Parliament in Estonia, another Soviet Baltic republic, voted overwhelmingly to declare its “sovereignty” within the Soviet Union and assert its fundamental right to review all national legislation before it went into effect there.

Those decisions, based on legislation drafted by Estonian Communist Party and government leaders, have been sharply criticized in Moscow, and the Kremlin summoned those leaders to the capital for consultations. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the national Parliament, is planning a special meeting to review actions it considers to be unconstitutional.

Qualified Support

Brazauskas also persuaded his colleagues to offer qualified support for some of the controversial changes in the country’s political system, proposed by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that will be considered by the national Parliament Nov. 29.

Although the lawmakers strongly criticized the proposed constitutional amendments as concentrating too much power in the center and undermining the promised political devolution here, they agreed to play down their opposition, working for changes in the draft legislation, and to support the accompanying electoral reform.

The Lithuanian Parliament did vote in the end, as part of a compromise worked out by Brazauskas, to make Lithuanian the republic’s official language, relegating Russian to secondary status; to legalize use of the long-banned flag of independent Lithuania and to reinstate the old national anthem. All the moves had been endorsed several months ago by the republic’s ruling Communist Party.

More than 10,000 people, accusing local politicians of “treason” to the Lithuanian nationalist cause, filled one of the main squares in Vilnius, the capital, on Friday evening to protest the votes, according to local journalists. A 10-minute transportation strike has been called for Monday by the Lithuanian Reform Movement, known as Sajudis, to protest the Parliament’s action.

“We have treacherously knifed the Estonians in the back,” Sajudis said in a statement after the parliamentary decisions.

Estonians had counted upon support from both Lithuania and Latvia, the third Baltic republic. Leaders of the Popular Front of Estonia, the new, broadly based political movement there, expressed disappointment that Lithuanians had pulled back, weakening the Baltic case in Moscow.

“They cracked,” a front spokesman in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, said of the Lithuanians. “It is a sharp disappointment--we had hoped the Baltic republics would stand together--but it is a keen reminder of the struggle we face to become masters in our own homes.”

The Lithuanian vote came as an Estonian delegation was meeting here with Kremlin officials to explain their stunning move, actions unprecedented for such a high-level Soviet body.

Although Moscow is set against the Estonian measures and might rule them unconstitutional, as Soviet newspapers continue to suggest, a member of the Estonian delegation to Moscow said in a television interview that there is “no reason to panic” since all these issues are still being debated within party and government circles.

Divergence ‘Not Permissible’

“I can suppose that the Supreme Soviet of Estonia will have to reconsider its (new) laws,” Boris Lazarev, a constitutional lawyer, commented in the government newspaper Izvestia on Friday. “It is not permissible that the constitution of a republic diverges from the constitution of the Soviet Union.”

The whole relationship between the country’s 15 constituent republics and the central government, as well as strictly ethnic relations, will be discussed in mid-1989 at a special meeting of the Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee, and out of that debate should come a “coordinated approach” to all these issues, Lazarev said.

But Estonian leaders remained determined to pursue their course, which they regard as the logical expression of perestroika , or restructuring, the program of radical political, economic and social reforms begun by Gorbachev.

“ Perestroika is a hope, and democracy is a hope,” said Indrek Toome, the newly elected Estonian premier, as he arrived in Moscow for talks with central authorities. “And every hope has a moment of unease.”