Lithuania Peace Mission OKd for Gorbachev

The Soviet Communist Party, trying to prevent a far-reaching split in its ranks, Tuesday authorized President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other senior leaders to undertake a peace mission to the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania, whose Communist Party declared its independence from Moscow last week.

While some members of the Soviet party’s policy-making Central Committee had demanded the Lithuanians’ expulsion, the committee as a whole supported Gorbachev in seeking a compromise, party officials said after a two-day emergency meeting on the crisis.

Vadim A. Medvedev, a member of the party’s ruling Politburo and its ideology secretary, told a news conference that Gorbachev will travel to Lithuania shortly with other members of the Soviet leadership for a series of broad discussions with Lithuanian party members.

The 250-member Central Committee will resume its meeting next month to discuss what action to take.

Describing the mission as “really a massive campaign, a very serious effort” aimed at persuading the 200,000 Lithuanian Communists to remain members of the Soviet party, Medvedev said the Central Committee wants “a compromise taking into account the real situation in that republic.”

“We have to work politically with Communists in Lithuania to find out everything there,” he said, “and on the basis of that understanding, to find a solution.”

Medvedev said the Central Committee had fully endorsed Gorbachev’s rejection of the Lithuanian action at a party congress last week as a blow to “our hopes and plans for renewing socialist society in the spirit of humanism and democracy.” He added that the committee supports the Soviet leader’s assertion of the need for “a single, firm and powerful Soviet Union” to ensure the country’s progress as well as international stability.

But committee members, even after two days of debate, were deeply divided on how to respond to the Lithuanian move, which threatens the Communist Party’s sacred principle of party unity as well as posing an unprecedented challenge to the country’s central leadership.

Medvedev said that a number of the 46 speakers at the meeting demanded the abrogation of the Lithuanian action and the expulsion from the Soviet party of the Lithuanian leadership. But he said others had called with equal vigor for an understanding of the situation in Lithuania, where the party faces a tough election in two months, and had urged a compromise.

The debate was so sharp and bitter, in fact, that only Gorbachev’s report--and, presumably, his concluding speech--will be published, lest the comments of the other speakers expose the deep rifts within the leadership and further inflame passions.

The Lithuanian question, however, is of crucial importance for the Soviet Communist Party, because this is the first time in nearly 70 years that the central leadership has faced such a major factional challenge. At issue is not only the independence of the Lithuanian Communists as a national party but also the political philosophy, program and tactics that they will follow.

Gorbachev, speaking Monday to the Central Committee, made clear that the entire party’s future is in the balance as he rejected the Lithuanians’ declaration of independence.

“No part of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is entitled to decide the question of its independent existence on the basis of its own program and rules without taking into account the positions of the Soviet Communist Party as a whole,” he said. “This means that the Lithuanian Communist Party remains an integral part of the single Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

He warned that the Soviet leadership “will not permit the breakup of the federal state” but will seek, as he has said before, to restructure the Soviet state as a true federation of constituent republics, each having maximum autonomy.

Medvedev, briefing journalists at the end of the two-day session, emphasized the party’s commitment to a peaceful resolution of the present crisis and ruled out any use of force by Moscow to impose its will on the rebellious Lithuanians.

“We are against military means,” Medvedev declared as correspondents pressed him on how the central party leadership would prevent this political schism from turning into full-scale secession. “In this case, as well as in others, we stand for political methods of solving all problems, and we will use them to solve problems in the Soviet Union.”

But Medvedev warned, as Gorbachev had done, that the leadership is preparing legislation to curb secessionist movements. “The Soviet leadership, party and state, will take the necessary measures to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” he said.

Calls for Lithuania’s secession had greatly alarmed the central leadership, he continued, and the Lithuanian party’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Communist Party had “removed the major barrier to prevent separatist, secessionist tendencies.”

The Lithuanian action had already brought many warnings that the Communist Party and the Soviet Union itself are on the road to dissolution, and nationalists in other republics--including Lithuania’s neighbors, Estonia and Latvia; Armenia and Georgia in the south, and recently, Moldavia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine--have been watching Lithuania’s fate closely.

Explaining legislation proposed by Gorbachev to prohibit groups from advocating secession, Medvedev said: “The constitution contains the right to self-determination, including the right of secession, but it does not include anything about the right to promote secession. One thing is a constitutional norm; the other is a matter of public policy.”

There were also “quite evident differences” between the situation in Lithuania and other Soviet republics, which are seeking various forms of autonomy, sovereignty and independence, and the dramatic political transformation under way in Eastern Europe.

“There is a distinction between these issues--one involves the internal affairs of foreign countries and the other the domestic affairs of the Soviet Union as a single union of republics,” Medvedev said, stressing the party’s need to take a firm stand on the future of the country.

Medvedev said the party leadership hopes to resolve the problem before the end of January, when the Central Committee is scheduled to hold a major meeting on plans for the national party congress next October. That session will discuss proposed changes in the party platform, including far-reaching questions of future philosophy and policy and the reorganization of the party structure.

Rejecting suggestions that the Central Committee has shown itself too politically divided to act, Medvedev stressed the desire for compromise.

“For the time being, we do not have a full assessment of the Lithuanian party congress,” he said. “This will be made after members of the Politburo and Central Committee go to Lithuania and have their discussions. We will then be able to understand the situation in the republic better, and we will have firsthand information taking into account the real situation there. Our discussion will then . . . allow us to find a way out.”

But Medvedev described the Lithuanian action as “a step that disrupts the unity of the party” and added, “Efforts must now be made to prevent a chain reaction from occurring.”

The danger comes, he suggested, not only from nationalists in other republics but from conservatives who used the action as a basis for their opposition to perestroika , as Gorbachev’s political and economic restructuring is known .

“Steps like that do discredit practical work on perestroika , and they can serve as the basis for conservative attacks on perestroika ,” he said. “Here we are dealing with the negative aftereffects--that’s self-evident--and the positive results are not visible. . . .

“This also encourages other forces (advocating) anti-democratic methods. . . . Is this the road to democracy or to authoritarian methods? This time of tensions and aggravation tempts people to apply anti-democratic methods.”

Medvedev was extremely sensitive, however, to any suggestion that the admitted divisions in the Central Committee implied criticism of Gorbachev. Barely two weeks ago, the party leader had been ambushed by conservatives critical of his reform policies and had silenced them only with a warning that he would resign if he lost the committee’s confidence.

The meeting had been “unanimous” in support of Gorbachev’s “assessments and conclusions,” he said, and that unanimity included the Lithuanian participants.

In Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, an estimated 10,000 people gathered in the square before the cathedral in support of their party leadership and the independence of the Lithuanian Communist Party.

But Algirdas Brazauskas, the Lithuanian party first secretary, told Lithuanian Radio that the Central Committee decision to send a mission to the republic was “good and helpful.”

Medvedev rejected as “tactical and not a matter of principle” the basic Lithuanian argument for the independence of its Communist Party--that the party’s prestige is so low that it is in danger of losing power in the February republic elections and that only through establishing its independence from Moscow can it regain its influence.

Breaking Ranks