Lithuania Leader Urges Split With Soviet Party : Baltics: The radical program echoes East Bloc reforms, but it is sure to anger Gorbachev.

The leader of the Lithuanian Communist Party called on the party Tuesday to declare its independence from the Soviet Communist Party in an unprecedented move that he described as essential if Lithuania is to restore its sovereignty as a state.

Algirdas Brazauskas, the forceful and charismatic first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, told a special congress here that the national party, through its past complicity with Stalinism and its failure to keep up with the demands of the people for reform, has virtually lost its authority to govern.

Echoing Communist leaders throughout Eastern Europe, Brazauskas urged his party to rebuild itself by first admitting its past errors and asserting its independence from Moscow--and then by making the re-establishment of Lithuanian statehood and the reshaping of the political and economic systems here its primary goals.

“We can renounce the past only through radical changes,” Brazauskas declared. He outlined further measures, including a full multi-party political system, a market economy and the sale of state enterprises to private companies that will take Lithuania far beyond the reforms proposed by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for the Soviet Union as a whole.

However, the ultimate focus of those changes must be Lithuanian independence, he continued, challenging on an issue so sensitive that Gorbachev had publicly and repeatedly warned the Lithuanian party and Brazauskas personally against this break with Moscow.

But Gorbachev’s warnings had little evident impact as speaker after speaker rose to denounce the Soviet party and to call for the independence of the Lithuanian party.

Only two delegates dared to challenge the majority view. “The Soviet Communist Party is strong enough a structure to carry out reforms itself, and I do not see any basis for severing relations with it,” Leonid Jankulewicz, a regional party leader, said. “We should limit ourselves to adopting a new program.”

When the 1,038 delegates vote today, more than two-thirds are expected to endorse Brazauskas’ call for a break with the Soviet party in a move that will send political shock waves through the country’s other constituent republics.

Although Gorbachev has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to accept the changes in Eastern Europe as the result of “freedom of choice,” Lithuania, the other Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia, and later perhaps Armenia and Georgia will challenge that commitment to the utmost.

Brazauskas, while emphasizing Lithuania’s desire for “independence” and “sovereignty,” avoided answering directly the implicit question of whether Lithuania would remain a part of the Soviet Union or secede.

“Our future is in a union of sovereign states,” Brazauskas said. “We broadly support Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies as a guarantee for the sovereignty and economic independence of our republic. This will make it possible to build a Soviet Union from which it would then be possible to secede if desired.”

Arvydas Juozaitis, a leader of the Lithuanian national movement Sajudis, praised Brazauskas’ speech as important psychologically as it was politically.

“This declaration of independence from the Soviet Communist Party is a dress rehearsal for the declaration of independence of Lithuania,” he said later. “Secession is not just a juridical problem and a political problem, but it is also a psychological problem. That has now been overcome.”

Brazauskas, speaking of Lithuanians’ longing for the independence enjoyed for two decades from the end of World War I to its absorption by the Soviet Union in 1940, said that “every nation strives to have its own state--the problem is how to realize those aspirations.”

In its new program, the Lithuanian Communist Party declares that its primary goal is “building a democratic society and the maximum implementation of the basic humanistic goals of socialism, the most important of which are liberty and social justice.”

“This goal can be achieved in Lithuania at present only on the condition that it is an independent state,” the program says. “Therefore, the restoration of Lithuanian statehood is the prime task of the Communist Party of Lithuania.”

Brazauskas, acknowledging that his party had little chance of winning the republican elections scheduled for February, said that only by such a break with the Soviet party and the reorientation of the Lithuanian party could it reassert its political leadership here.

Brazauskas also proposed that the Lithuanian Communists form a “united front” with other political parties and groups, including Sajudis, to promote political and economic reforms here and move Lithuania toward independence.

Most political observers believe that the Communist candidates would win perhaps 35% of the seats in the local elections in late February, with four new parties dividing the rest.

“After the election, I believe there will be no force capable of forming a one-party government,” Justas Paleckis, head of the party’s ideology department, told journalists. “In terms of Lithuania and its situation, we might go into a coalition, and this is already taking shape with members of Sajudis becoming involved (in decision-making).

“Moscow will not object, not really. All the changes taking place here are with Moscow’s accord.”

Brazauskas proposed the restructuring of the Soviet Communist Party so that it becomes a federal organization--something already rejected by Gorbachev.