Lithuanians Cool to Vow of Plebiscite on Secession

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised a national vote on the republics’ right to secede, but Lithuanian leaders today rejected it as a “trap” and said Gorbachev has underestimated their republic’s desire for freedom.

Gorbachev, meanwhile, traveled to the Lithuanian countryside in an effort to stop Lithuania’s independence campaign.

The president, his voice cracking with emotion at times, predicted on Thursday night that Lithuanians will choose to stay in the Soviet Union once they realize the difficulty of secession and the hardships it would place on ethnic groups in their republic.

“Now, people don’t know what awaits them,” he said. “They’ve been told fairy tales, Russian fairy tales and Lithuanian fairy tales.”

His comments were broadcast today on Lithuanian television.

The Kremlin leader is in the middle of what so far has been a futile campaign to stop the secession movement, probably the worst political crisis Gorbachev has faced in his nearly five years in office.

Gorbachev noted that the Soviet Constitution guarantees each of the country’s 15 republics the right to secede and disclosed that the first draft of a law detailing the process of secession has been written.

The leader of Lithuania’s pro-independence Sajudis movement, Vytautas Landsbergis, today said of the announcement, “It’s a propaganda trap.”

“If we get entangled in the mechanism of seceding from the Soviet Union, we automatically act as if we were a legal part of the Soviet Union.” His group maintains that Lithuania’s incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940 was illegal.

Gorbachev promised a national discussion and referendum on the law, which would require republics to hold their own plebiscite on breaking away.

“I favor the existence of a mechanism (to secede) to stop this speculation. . . . Let there be a choice by the people,” Gorbachev said.

The audience broke into applause and broad smiles.

He gave no clear details about the draft law but implied it would require a republic considering secession to make detailed plans, set out the exact costs, both financial and in terms of human dislocation, and then hold an election.

He predicted that Lithuanians will reject secession in favor of a loose Soviet federation, saying they will never feel free if their lives improve at the expense of ethnic Russians, Poles and other non-Lithuanians who live in the republic.

When the audience objected, Gorbachev’s voice rose. “It will never happen,” he nearly shouted. “You are a civilized people. Your conscience won’t let you.”