Man of the Decade’s Challenge

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is a few days away from the most severe test of his six incredible years in office. Ironically, passing the test would probably mean pushing aside the Communist Party in the Soviet Union farther and faster than seemed possible just months ago.

The test involves a decision by the Lithuanian Communist Party, made just before Christmas, to break away from the Soviet Communist Party. The vote in Vilnius left the first visible crack in the national party since Lenin’s revolution. The defection by one of the Soviet Union’s tinier republics seems to have rocked the Kremlin more than the collapse of communism in all six Warsaw Pact nations since August.

Moscow is taking the defection hard because now, more than at any time since the Soviet government abandoned the brute force it inherited from Stalin, the Communist Party is what holds the Soviet empire together. Gorbachev himself subscribed to that during this week’s emergency meeting of the party’s Central Committee, drawing no line between the party and the state. Calling the Lithuanian vote to break away “illegitimate,” he said that “the current party and state leadership will not permit the breakup of the state.”

The committee could not decide exactly how to react, choosing instead to send Gorbachev to Lithuania to see whether the considerable powers of leadership and persuasion that make him Time Magazine’s Man of the Decade can coax a reversal from the Lithuanians. The numbers are against him. Fewer than 20% of Lithuania’s party members voted against the break, mostly Russian or Polish nationals or military officers.

Three things make Lithuania such a severe test for Gorbachev. One is that his reform policies encouraged the break. Lithuanians live better than most Soviets, partly because they work harder. Some months ago, Gorbachev persuaded the new Soviet Parliament to give Lithuania economic autonomy, partly so its people could show Soviets how market socialism can work.

Another is a fear among leaders in Moscow that if the Soviet empire is allowed to chip itself apart one republic at a time, the common Russian house will turn into a common vacant lot. Lithuania’s neighbors along the Baltic coast, Latvia and Estonia, are prepared to follow suit.

The third factor, the nationalities problem, intensifies the others. The Republic of Georgia, in the far south of the Soviet Union, has served notice that it wants out. If Lithuania’s Communists can peel away, Armenia’s will certainly try.

Gorbachev is Time’s Man of the Decade largely because he has made a case with actions and not just words that he is serious about ending the Cold War. That the United States misjudged its own surrogate forces in Afghanistan does not cancel the fact that he did pull his troops out of that country. He didn’t lift a finger to save communism in the Warsaw Pact nations. Taking the first of what he says will be many troops and tanks from Europe is another example.

But Lithuania may be intractable, and one bad move could weaken much of the goodwill he has built up in the West. If Lithuania’s Communist leaders refuse to back down, he could fire them. But there is no sign that new leaders would be more effective in stifling the republic’s yearning for independence. He could declare martial law, but that would bring out centuries of bad blood going back to the days of Peter the Great and would surely lead to violence.

It may be too much to expect an answer for every problem from this remarkable man whose energy and gift for surprise have dominated global politics for the latter half of the 1980s. But we would not be surprised to see him pull this one out. He might, for example, tell Lithuania’s leaders that if they want to set a pattern for breaking away, they owe him a pattern for staying in. If they want to pull out of the Soviet Communist Party--a step that others republics are certain to follow--they must draft a framework that the others could also use to remain part of a Soviet federation. Nothing in real life is ever quite that tidy. But Gorbachev must find a better option than martial law if he is to keep skeptics in the West persuaded that his goal remains ending the Cold War.