SOVIET TURMOIL: LITHUANIA : Socialist Republic That Never Was : To identify Baltic independence hopes as secession is to play a cruel semantic trick on occupied lands that never wanted to be part of the Soviet Union.

When Adolf Hitler occupied the Czech lands in 1939, he incorporated them into Nazi Germany under the name of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But the Czechs felt that being “protected” by the Germans was a cruel joke. Most of the world agreed.

The land remained occupied Czechoslovakia, run directly and mercilessly from Berlin. And when Czech independence was restored at the end of World War II, no one in his right mind said that the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had “seceded” from Germany. Except as a Nazi semantic trick, the protectorate never was.

One year later, Josef Stalin occupied the Republic of Lithuania (along with Latvia and Estonia) and incorporated it into the Soviet Union under the name of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Lithuanians felt that such a republic was a cruel joke. They still do. This land remained occupied Lithuania, run directly and mercilessly from Moscow.

Now that Lithuania is trying to restore its independence, Moscow says that Lithuania is threatening to secede from the Soviet Union. One cannot secede from a union that one never joined in the first place. Except as a Soviet semantic trick, a Soviet Lithuanian republic never existed.

Does it matter that Soviet occupation of the Baltic states has lasted 10 times longer than the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia? Even if Nazi Germany had lasted for 50 years, the Czechs would not have stopped being an occupied nation before the last of them was murdered or mentally converted. The Soviets have had plenty of time in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and they have failed on both accounts. Because the Balts feel like occupied nations, they are. And occupied nations do not secede.

We avoid the word secession even in the case of some people whose hearts and minds did belong to an empire, for much longer than 50 years, but who then decided to cut that tie. If secession does not fit the 13 American Colonies, then it fits the three Baltic states even less.

A major mistake of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has been to view the Baltic issue as a secession by voluntary members of a family of nations undergoing hard times. Calling rape lovemaking is not a way to win the victim’s trust. Yet that was Gorbachev’s main theme while touring Lithuania. No dialogue can result from such faulty premises. Moscow can of course suppress Baltic rights by brute force. But that would mean “fighting for the drumsticks when the drum is gone,” as they say in Estonia. Maybe all of Stalin’s conquests in Eastern Europe were worth fighting for, from an imperial viewpoint, but having let go of 90% percent of them, there is no logic in trying to hang on to remainders in the Baltic states. The proper place for Moscow to hold the line is the Soviet border as established under Lenin.

Baltic independence is an integral part of the liquidation of the Hitler-Stalin pact. It is not a precedent for independence of pre-1939 parts of the Soviet Union, unless Moscow chooses to present it as such. But the Soviets will have to act rapidly. They still can declare the occupation of the Baltic states as a Stalinist mistake and pull out the troops, with fairly little noise from the prewar Soviet territory. One year from now it will be more difficult.

This does not mean abdicating all Soviet defense and economic interests in the Baltic. Most Baltic patriots are willing to negotiate for Soviet military bases in their country as a price for independence. Some Soviet generals have raised the specter of the independent Baltic states joining the Atlantic Alliance. But the Finns have not done so and the Poles are not expected to. Why, then, should the Balts be more oblivious of geography?

The same applies to economic ties. Gorbachev asked the Lithuanians where they would get their oil, should they became independent. They hope to get it from the same place that Finland does: largely from the Soviet Union. Baltic independence would not cut any trade relations as long as Moscow does not boycott Baltic goods out of sheer spite. The Baltic states certainly would not try to embargo their closest and largest neighbor.

When all else fails, Soviet spokesmen argue that “instant independence” is unreasonable. But all Baltic patriots recognize that the withdrawal of Soviet troops and civilian administrators will perforce take a long time. The last thing they would want is a retreat so rapid that it leaves a vacuum. But yes, the Balts want an instant start of negotiations for independence, because talks now are the best guarantees against “instant independence” later.

Gorbachev has persuasively talked about a “common European home” stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. A home has rooms, not prison cells. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are part of the common European home. That is, the Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. A Soviet Lithuania there never was, except in the warped sense of a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.