Gorbachev Blasts Break by Lithuanians

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev blasted Lithuania’s Communists today for breaking with the national Communist Party in their drive to restore their republic’s sovereignty.

The national Communist Party Central Committee scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss the historic defiance.

Rimantas Kanapenes, a spokesman for Lithuania’s political group Sajudis, said Gorbachev summoned Lithuanian members of the national Parliament to protest Wednesday’s decision by the Lithuanian Communist Party Congress to end subordination to the national party and declare itself independent, with its own rules and program.

The Kremlin had warned of “great trouble” ahead for the Lithuanians, and it came fast.

Gorbachev told the Congress he shared the “concern and alarm” of many Communists about Lithuania’s action and said the ruling Politburo decided to call an emergency meeting of the Central Committee, its parent body, on the issue “in a few days.”

Kanapenes said Gorbachev telephoned Lithuanian party chief Algirdas Brazauskas in Vilnius, the republic’s capital, shortly after the 855-160 vote to break away from the national party.

“Brazauskas said it was a very difficult conversation,” Kanapenes said. “Gorbachev said he was very sorry” about the decision and said the national party’s policy-making Central Committee would meet to issue a response.

Kanapenes said Gorbachev aides also called in the head of Sajudis, Vytautas Landsbergis.

A resolution approved by Lithuania’s legislature declares the republic’s party an “equal partner with the Soviet Communist Party, other progressive parties, public organizations and movements.”

That position runs counter to more than 80 years of party policy. Before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir I. Lenin demanded unity, and a 1921 party congress formally ruled out any factions.

Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev had said Wednesday that Lithuania’s move “is great trouble for the people and for Communists.”