Angry Gorbachev Opposes Separate Lithuanian Party

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in nearly five hours of sometimes angry talks with rebellious Lithuanian Communists, said Thursday that he is absolutely opposed to their decision to break with the Soviet Communist Party but is eager to find a compromise to end the standoff between the Baltic republic and Moscow, according to participants in the meeting.

“It was a hard discussion, and there is no doubt that we are in conflict and that Gorbachev is angry,” Justas Poletskis, the Lithuanian party’s ideology chief and one of the participants, said in an interview. However, he said the meeting, which took place in Moscow, “also was marked by good will on both sides, and we hope for more progress later.”

Gorbachev is scheduled to visit Vilnius next week. The majority of the republic’s party members, in a vote last month, declared their independence from Moscow and formed a second Lithuanian Communist Party, which represents about 80% of the republic’s 200,000 party card-holders.

Subsequently, Gorbachev summoned the Lithuanian party’s Central Committee to Moscow for an emergency meeting. He postponed the meeting’s conclusion until he and other senior leaders of the Soviet party can visit Lithuania.

Lithuania, the first Soviet republic to follow the East European example of breaking with Moscow, is being viewed as a test case, particularly by the other Baltic republics, Latvia and Estonia. If Moscow takes no punitive action, Communist parties in other Soviet republics are likely to follow suit.

Poletskis and other Communists here emphasized that they will not abandon their decision to make the Lithuanian Communist Party independent of the Soviet Communist Party.

“One possible compromise we discussed is that there will be a transitional period before we become completely independent as a party,” Poletskis said. “The two sides are still very far apart. But we know we must do something to support Gorbachev and his policies.”

Another who took part in the Moscow talks, Romualdas Ozalas, described the atmosphere as tense, but he said he believes that Gorbachev and the Central Committee are trying to find a solution “which would please both sides.”

He said Gorbachev was concerned but optimistic that a compromise will be reached.

Vladimir Beriozovos, a second secretary of the Lithuanian party, told Lithuanian Radio: “If my mood yesterday was not bad, then today it is better. We explained our position to Gorbachev. We were understood.”

Another participant said Gorbachev appeared to understand that the party’s decision last month to declare its independence is widely supported in Lithuania and cannot be reversed except by force. He said Gorbachev is not willing to use force.

The mood in the snow-covered Lithuanian capital is one of exhilaration combined with weariness as people waited to see how Gorbachev would respond to the decision to break with Moscow.

The new, independent attitude of the largest faction of the Lithuanian party has given the Communists an enormous boost in popularity, and this is expected to help them win seats in the republic’s Parliament in elections scheduled for late February.

Also, it is seen by many as a significant victory on the road to complete independence from Moscow, a goal widely sought in Lithuania.

Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, was independent until 1940, when the Soviet Union absorbed the Baltic states under secret codicils of the nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. Lithuanians tend to romanticize the period of independence, and local leaders say that recent events in East Europe have given them the courage to try to move more quickly toward secession.

But Gorbachev has made it clear that he does not consider East Europe a model for any of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.

In a series of private meetings with leading Lithuanians last month, Gorbachev expressed anger at their decision to break with the Soviet party, according to several officials who attended those meetings.

“This is a great blow to perestroika and to me personally,” one participant quoted Gorbachev as saying. Perestroika is Gorbachev’s program of sweeping reforms.

Another quoted Gorbachev as warning the Lithuanian leaders, “You won’t survive.”

Asked by one of the Lithuanians if this should be interpreted as a prediction or a threat, Gorbachev reportedly replied, “It is simply a prediction.” But many in Vilnius said they expect some kind of Kremlin backlash to be forced by the conservatives. Some said this most likely to come in the form of an economic blockade.

“We must gather our forces to prepare for this,” economist Kazimieras Antanavitchius, a Lithuanian legislator, said in an interview. “It won’t be announced. It won’t be official. It will simply be that Lithuania will be the last republic to receive goods.”

He said supplies from Russia are already down by 30%, but he added that it is difficult to tell what portion of this might have been caused by a worsening of the economic situation as a whole.