Ethnic Demands May Test Gorbachev Hold on Unity

Ethnic demands for more independence from Moscow or even full separation from the Soviet Union are gaining new legitimacy during fiery debates in the new Congress of People’s Deputies, and the explosive issue is likely to test President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s ability to hold his country together in coming months.

Emboldened by public outcry over the debacle two months ago in the Soviet republic of Georgia, when Soviet soldiers killed at least 20 people in suppressing a nationalist demonstration, leaders of some of the country’s 15 republics and more than 100 ethnic groups have insisted this week on the floor of the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses that they be permitted greater self-rule.

In some cases, the deputies have even called for an examination of the very conditions under which their homelands became part of the Soviet Union.

Official Communist Party media previously said such demands came only from “extremist elements,” those implied to be anti-social and mentally unbalanced. Now, for the first time, millions of people riveted to their television sets are hearing independence cries from serious-looking men in suits and ties.

The live broadcasts from the congress’ sessions would sweep the ratings if the country measured such things, and so the debates over ethnic issues are garnering a wide audience and having an enormous influence.

“Once you begin opening up, there is no stopping, really,” a senior Western diplomat said Friday, commenting on the attention that the assembly’s deputies have given to issues of nationalism.

Trying to dismiss ethnic differences in this vast nation at this point, the diplomat said, would be “rather dangerous.”

He suggested that one way to defuse tension would be to let the republics and autonomous regions have a large measure of self-determination while trying to persuade them that their interests would be best served by remaining part of the Soviet Union.

Under the constitution, each of the union’s republics has the right to secede from the Soviet Union and set up its own government. That theoretical right has never been put to the test.

But in the last week alone, demands for independence have come from groups as diverse as the 100,000 Ingush Muslims living in the Stavropol region in the southern Russian republic to the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians who have insisted on learning the details of a long-secret pact between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin in 1939 that led to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic republics.

(On Thursday, the congress approved a Kremlin inquiry into the pact, signed by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, V. M. Molotov, in 1939. Although documents related to the pact were destroyed by the Nazis, West German Information Minister Hans Klein said Friday that a microfilm of the secret protocols has survived and has been inspected by two Soviet historians.)

Georgians, Ukrainians and Central Asians also have demanded greater local sovereignty. While most are demanding that Moscow loosen the reins of control, in one case a shouting match erupted between two deputies representing ethnic minorities trying to sort out power between themselves, the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis.

The underlying complaint is the same: Ethnic minorities are finally fed up by the Soviet policy of slivanie, a Russian word that refers to the effort to merge the country’s various peoples over the years into one “Soviet man.”

Many of the minorities assert that in this effort ethnic Russians, who make up just over half of the country’s population of 287 million, have traditionally displayed a lack of sensitivity to the union’s other cultures.

Stalin pursued the merging policy with a particular vigilance. He deported a number of non-Russian leaders, restricted the use of minority languages and tried to suppress many cultural traditions.

Deputy Roy A. Medvedev, a historian recently restored to membership in the Communist Party after years of persecution for his accounts of the horrors of the Stalin era, drew applause when he told the congress this week that the Soviet Union has a history of “failing to respect the rights of small nations.”

Gorbachev has sought to douse the flames of passion without appearing to belittle the issue.

When he first took over the post as Communist Party leader in 1985 and began a drive to reform his country, Gorbachev told delegates in a speech this week, he did not fully appreciate the need to review the country’s policy toward ethnic groups. That led, he said, to “a delay in solving a number of burning problems.”

One mistake he was probably referring to was his decision to replace a local party chief in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan with a Russian. That sparked two days of rioting in the city of Alma Ata in December, 1986, that left two people dead and about 200 injured.

But Gorbachev assured the deputies this week that efforts are now under way to hand over greater responsibility to local bodies and that Moscow has recognized the “multiformity of national cultures as of great social and historic value.”

“We have no right to underestimate, much less lose, any of them,” he said, “for each is unique.”

He offered no specifics, however--something many deputies will definitely be looking for when the lawmaking Supreme Soviet, made up of 542 of the members of the congress, begins its work. The difficult task will be to find a formula to satisfy heated ethnic demands and still preserve national unity.