Lithuania: Not to Panic : But What Is Gorbachev’s Definition of ‘Force’?

The odds still are good that Lithuania can break away from the Soviet Union without violence--unless too many people panic or miscalculate. But panic and misunderstanding thrive in precisely the environment that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is busy creating. Nothing could breed miscalculation faster than moving Soviet troops around in the Baltic republic, confiscating Lithuanian weapons, reinforcing border patrols and generally tightening the screws on 3.6 million citizens who have adopted the Sinatra doctrine (“We’ll do it our way”) in a free election.

To its credit, the White House so far has resisted panic. It has formally expressed concern, but in the context that the commotion created by Moscow’s nightstick rattling makes negotiations and compromise more difficult.

A central reason for concern is that Gorbachev is keeping his real objective close to the vest. He has said that the Soviet state will not use force to compel Lithuania to remain in the empire, but “force” is not defined. If nobody were killed, would martial law not be considered force? Lithuania’s first feisty reaction was that the Soviets were growling to improve their bargaining position. Premier Kazimira Prunskiene said Wednesday that her people were “not getting too worked up about this,” despite talk about the ghost of Stalin.

Some factors in the standoff do indeed point to a Soviet bluff. Its first demands were that Lithuania not confiscate any Soviet factories, not set up its own customs posts at the border and not print its own money. Lithuanians took some comfort from the fact that they had no intention of doing any of those things and that Moscow was not throwing its weight around in a way that could really hurt--cutting off the country’s only supply of oil, for example. Perhaps the biggest factor is that Gorbachev knows that any act of brutality could set East-West relations as far back as the worst days of the Cold War.

Arguing against a bluff, however, is Gorbachev’s lack of support among Soviets, many of whom yearn for discipline, fear turmoil and most of whom are tired of waiting for an improvement in the way they live. While some scholars and other Kremlin-watchers insist that Moscow long ago wrote off the Baltic states, Gorbachev still must worry that republics larger and more important to the Soviet economy are just waiting for someone to start the process of breaking up the empire. The longer this war of nerves goes on, the shorter the odds that nobody will panic.