Russians in Estonia Protest Power Shift

The Russian minority in the Baltic republic of Estonia went on the offensive Wednesday with scattered strikes at factories and shipyards, protesting efforts by Estonian activists to sever the republic politically and economically from Moscow.

The action demonstrated the growing anger of the Russians, who have held the reins of power in the Soviet Union ever since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution but who have been criticized by many of the country’s more than 100 ethnic minorities.

Slightly more than 25% of Estonia’s population of 1.5 million is Russian and about 65% is Estonian. The rest are other ethnic minorities.

Many of the Russians fear that they will lose their rights in Estonia or even be forced to leave the republic by radical Estonian nationalists. Wednesday’s strike was the second by Russians in the republic in less than a month.

More than 200 people have been killed in ethnic violence in the Soviet Union in recent months, making the problem one of the toughest faced by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Protests have not turned violent in Estonia, one of the smallest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics. But Estonians have been among the most outspoken of the ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union in demanding independence from Moscow.

The Estonian nationalist movement, the Popular Front, won a major victory last month when the Soviet Parliament decided to grant greater economic freedom to Estonia and the other two republics on the Baltic Sea, Latvia and Lithuania.

Some Want to Secede

However, economic freedom is not enough for many Estonian activists, who have called for outright secession from the Soviet Union.

Last year, the republic’s legislature adopted resolutions symbolically making state property the property of Estonia rather than the Soviet Union and calling for a new “treaty of union” with Moscow based on “principles of parity.”

The Russians who went on strike Wednesday were angered by a law passed Tuesday by the republic’s legislature that would effectively bar many Russian workers living in Estonia from voting in local elections scheduled for later this year.

The new election law requires a minimum of two years’ residency in one district or five in the republic to vote in republic elections, and five years’ residency in a district or 10 in the republic to run for office. It was passed by a vote of 194 to 36. Most of the legislators opposing the law are Russians.

Many of the Russians in the republic, who moved to Estonia to take jobs in factories and shipyards, are recent arrivals and would be disenfranchised by the legislation.

The Russian strikers were also demonstrating against a new law that makes Estonian rather than Russian the republic’s official language.

Strikes were reported in several of the republic’s factories and shipyards. They also affected public transport in the capital of Tallinn, according to Yuri Rudyak, a member of the Russian-speaking group Inter-Movement, which was formed to defend the interests of native Russians. The group says it has 90,000 members in Estonia.

In late July, several thousand non-Estonians walked off their jobs at factories in Tallinn, returning to work only when the Estonian government agreed to set up a committee to ensure that the interests of non-Estonians would be protected.