Ligachev Urges Restraint on Soviet Unrest

MOSCOW —  A leading Kremlin conservative called Saturday for new measures to “guarantee the security of our country” against nationalist divisions that were flaring over the weekend in at least four Soviet republics.

Yegor K. Ligachev, a member of the ruling Communist Party Politburo, spoke against a background of nationalistic ferment that included demonstrations by as many as 150,000 people and strikes by thousands of others as activists moved to put pressure on the nation’s central authorities.

Ligachev, often viewed as the pillar of conservative reservations about President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform programs, stressed in a television interview that he was not calling for the use of force to cope with nationalistic unrest.

“We must take measures, but not repressive measures, not dictatorial measures, but political measures,” he said. However, he added, people who are attacking the party, the army, the KGB security police and the very structure of the state itself must be stopped.

“Let me say again: we must do it, not through dictatorship and repression but through consolidation of the unity of the party,” Ligachev said in the interview, which was broadcast after Saturday’s main evening television news program.

Heading Toward an ‘Abyss’

The party leader’s call followed a similar statement by the policy-making Central Committee of the party, which warned a week ago that unrestrained nationalism in the Soviet Union’s three Baltic republics was pushing them toward an “abyss” and threatening their “very viability.”

Also, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda on Saturday published an article by a well-known conservative columnist from the era of the late Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, accusing the Western press--and particularly such Western radio stations as the Voice of America--of inciting national unrest.

All three developments were viewed here as indications of growing Kremlin frustration over expanding nationalist and even separatist movements unleashed in the country’s constituent republics as a byproduct of Gorbachev’s democratic reforms.

The Soviet leader is reportedly on holiday, and his attitude toward the apparently hardening official line is uncertain. However, Soviet spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said last week that the Central Committee warning had been approved by the entire top leadership, including Gorbachev.

Even as Ligachev’s remarks were being broadcast Saturday, up to 100,000 Azerbaijanis in the Caspian seaport of Baku were waving national flags and calling for a republic-wide general strike on Monday unless Moscow meets their demands for greater autonomy and support in their bitter territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Demonstrators chanted “Down with the Moscow dictatorship!” and “Strike! Strike!” as they massed on the central Lenin Square outside republican government headquarters, according to eyewitnesses.

“We have heard the government’s call for unity, but these are nothing more than empty words,” Ekhtibar Mamedov, an activist in the nascent Azerbaijani Popular Front, told the crowd. “We say that the land and water and everything on it belongs to Azerbaijan,” he added. “We are the true owners, but our masters are still in Moscow.”

Truckloads of troops were reported to be in the immediate area but staying away from the demonstration itself, apparently in hopes of avoiding what could quickly turn into clashes in the tense republic.

Azerbaijanis and neighboring Armenians have been locked in a bloody dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region for two years, and all of Moscow’s efforts at finding some compromise have so far failed. Meanwhile, more than 90 people have been killed and unknown hundreds more injured in continuing clashes between the two peoples.

Troops and tanks still patrol the disputed region, which is located within Azerbaijan but has a population that is 70% Armenian. And the inter-ethnic violence has occasionally spread to Baku as well.

The Azerbaijani Popular Front, which organized Saturday’s demonstration, is not demanding full independence from the Soviet Union, as are activists in the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But it wants much greater republican control of its own affairs and unequivocal Kremlin backing for its continued hold on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Elsewhere Saturday, the official Tass news agency reported that thousands of Ukrainians rallied in the capital of Kiev to protest a proposed new republican election law.

Brezhnev Era Holdovers

The Ukrainian Communist Party leadership is largely held over from the now discredited Brezhnev era and is considered one of the most conservative in the country. Its proposed election law would set aside at least one-fourth of the seats in the republican Parliament for deputies chosen from closely affiliated public organizations.

Saturday’s rally was in support of the reformist Ukrainian Popular Front, which demands direct elections to the Parliament.

In Estonia, republican Communist Party leaders were meeting to discuss a new platform that would give them a more independent image without actually breaking away from the central party organs in Moscow.

Party activists in nearby Lithuania are openly discussing a full break with Moscow as the only way to maintain the party’s credibility with an increasingly restive population.

And in Moldavia, Pravda quoted a spokesman for a republican strike committee as saying that 202 enterprises and businesses are shut down in several cities because of a dispute over a new Moldavian language law.

The law, supposedly a compromise, was passed Thursday. It makes Moldavian the official language of the republic while allowing for use of Russian in inter-ethnic dealings.

However, Russians, Ukrainians and other nationalities that make up about 40% of the republic’s population are leading the strikes to protest what they see as discrimination.

In response to the strikers’ demands, Tass reported Saturday night, the Supreme Soviet in Moscow has set up a commission to study “the social and political situation” in the republic.

Ironically, hundreds of angry ethnic Moldavians reportedly demonstrated Thursday night to protest what they saw as the watering down of the language requirement.

Kremlin’s Troubles All Over The Map BALTIC STATES

Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, taken over by Soviet Union in 1940, are hotbeds of nationalist feelings. Defying Kremlin, the three have declared their native tongues official languages. Estonia has limited newcomers’ voting rights. Gorbachev has warned them not to push further.

ARMENIA & AZERBAIJAN

Muslim-Christian hatred has flared up in autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh within the largely Muslim Azerbaijan republic, with more than 90 killed since early 1988. Region’s Christian majority seeks unification with mainly Christian Armenian republic.

MOLDAVIA

Moldavia, taken over from Romania in 1940, is latest Soviet republic to flare up. As Moldavian majority asserts its identity, local Russians and other minorities demonstrate, charging discrimination.

MOLDAVIA

Moldavia, taken over from Romania in 1940, is latest Soviet republic to flare up. As Moldavian majority asserts its identity, local Russians and other minorities demonstrate, charging discrimination.

LABOR UNREST

Two weeks of coal mine strikes in Ukraine’s Donets Basin and Siberia’s Kuznets region in July, worst Soviet labor unrest since 1920s, idled more than 500,000 workers, cut coal output by a third until government agreed to economic reforms.

KAZAKHSTAN & UZBEKISTAN

In June, two Soviet Central Asian republics were struck by violence, with Kazakhs attacking ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan, and scores killed in fighting between Uzbeks and minority Meskhetian Turks in Uzbekistan.

GEORGIA

In April, at least 20 died when Red Army put down protests by Georgians seeking independence. Other deaths have been reported in clashes between Georgians and minority Abkhazians, who seek independence for their autonomous region in western Georgia.