Latvia Communist Party May Split Over Independence : Soviet Union: A congress in the Baltic republic opens with a plea for a compromise on the issue of secession.

The Latvian Communist Party, like the Communist parties in the neighboring Soviet Baltic republics of Lithuania and Estonia, is heading for a split this weekend between members wanting immediate independence and others remaining loyal to the Soviet Union.

Janis Vagris, the first secretary of the Latvian party, opened a party congress on Friday with a plea for a compromise that would make independence a long-term goal but focus first on economic development and greater autonomy.

“The real political independence of Latvia is possible only when its economic independence is guaranteed,” Vagris told the congress in Riga, the Latvian capital. “However, today in Latvia, there is not an economic structure appropriate to a sovereign state.

“Independence,” he said, “is a word that should not be pronounced too loudly. . . . This will take much time.”

Vagris argued that the restoration of Latvia’s sovereignty was not a goal for its own sake but a means of improving life in the republic. For that reason, he said, the party should support the concept of “a sovereign Latvia as part of the union of independent socialist states” envisioned by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in place of today’s highly centralized Soviet Union.

But the mood in the congress after a day of debate was not for compromise. A radical minority argued passionately for immediate moves toward independence, conservatives urged with equal vigor that Latvia remain within the Soviet Union, and moderates, forming a third faction under Vagris, called for a compromise--but with little prospect of acceptance.

Even conservatives acknowledged the probability that the party would split by the end of the congress. “I am sorry about it, but I fear that a split is inevitable,” Arnold Lautsens, the Riga party leader, told reporters.

The conservatives moved Friday to show that they would fight any attempt at secession. The Riga city party committee, which is controlled by party conservatives, closed the local Communist newspaper for taking too radical a line.

Anda Anspoka, a spokeswoman for the Popular Front, which has planned an independence campaign for May, said she and other observers saw no real basis for holding the party together.

Before the congress opened, party radicals, claiming a third of the 791 delegates, had warned that they would form their own independent party if others failed to support their program for Latvia’s secession from the Soviet Union.

“We will try to put through our position on an independent Latvian course and an independent Latvia state,” Ivars Endzins, a leader of the radical faction, said. “If they do not accept it, there is hardly any reason to continue working within this party.”

Vagris warned the party that it has to adjust to participate in Latvia’s rapidly emerging multi-party political system and to meet the challenge posed by the Latvian Popular Front, whose grass-roots support greatly exceeds the party’s membership of 177,000 and which recently won a majority of the seats in the Latvian Parliament.

“At the present stage, the Popular Front is the most influential political organization in the republic,” Vagris said. “This is a reality that the Communist Party of Latvia cannot ignore.”

Endzins said the party, if it hopes to remain representative of Latvians and politically relevant, must reflect the rising separatist sentiments in the republic of 2.5 million people, slightly more than half of whom are ethnic Latvians. Even before Vagris spoke, the radicals said they would hold a founding conference for an independent party next Saturday.

The Latvian Popular Front and other pro-independence groups in recent elections won all but one of the seats needed for a two-thirds majority in the republic’s Parliament. With several runoff elections scheduled, they are confident of reaching the required number.

“There is now a 90% chance that Parliament will declare independence,” said Janis Gavars, a member of Parliament. “When and how just depend on the situation in Lithuania and Estonia.”

The Lithuanian Supreme Council adopted a unilateral declaration of independence on March 11, and the republic has been locked in a war of nerves with the central government ever since.

Gorbachev, warning of “grave consequences,” told Lithuanians last weekend they must annul the act before the problem can be resolved. On Thursday, the Lithuanians responded with a conciliatory proposal for a dialogue.

Estonia’s Parliament approved a step-by-step transition to independence--but still drew a strong rebuke from Gorbachev.

Both the Lithuanian and Estonian parties first split before the republics’ governments moved to declare their independence. All three Baltic republics were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II under an agreement with Nazi Germany.

Tensions remained high Friday in Lithuania. The official Soviet news agency Tass described the situation there as “an unsteady balance” with plans for a major pro-independence demonstration today. Workers, mostly Russians, held one-hour strikes Friday at factories in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, amid calls for Gorbachev to end the “chaos and disorder.”