PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOVIET UNION : Revolt Against Shoddiness and Rot : Economics is at the bottom of the independence effort: to thrive as a bridge between East and West.

The week before his election to the Lithuanian presidency, Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis met with me in a cool, dimly lit classroom at the music conservatory in Vilnius, where he was still teaching. He told me about a recently completed transportation study. It seems Lithuania and the Soviet Union have been plagued with train wrecks caused by the rails giving way. Lithuanian engineers investigated and discovered that the Soviet-produced railroad ties had been insufficiently treated with preservative and had rotted. Landsbergis pantomined the engineers putting their hands inside the ties and pulling out fistfuls of crumbled wood. Some ties, however, were hard as rocks. The engineers dusted them off and discovered the imprint: “Republic of Lithuania--1935.”

The Baltic independence movement is not a revolution made from above. It is, to a great extent, a “meat and potatoes revolution,” based on issues that make it truly democratic. People didn’t need to be instructed by politicians about the shoddy products and illogical manufacturing methods and the dehumanization inherent in Stalinist-Brezhnevist distribution and marketing systems.

As in any country, it is the taxi drivers who best reflect the popular sentiment. Baltic cabbies don’t talk about historic and political motivations. They are simply tired of poorly made Soviet cars, unsafe tires and gasoline refined so poorly it contains floating bits of tar. Their wives are dehumanized at work and in the endless shopping lines. Mikhail Gorbachev himself found it impossible to argue with Lithuanian taxi drivers during his visit last winter. The fine points on the proper rules of secession are lost on them.

As far as the Balts are concerned, it is the Russians who are not committed to perestroika . The Balts burn for it. (Indeed, the full name of Landsbergis’ political party, popularity referred to as Sajudis (Lithuanian for “movement”) is Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sajudis (“Lithuania’s Perestroika Movement”). But what may have started as reform movements in all three Baltic States has clearly changed direction. They have concluded that Baltic perestroika is impossible under Russian management.

Gorbachev himself is frustrated with Russian attitudes. When he visits Russian towns and hears complaints of shortages and bad living conditions, he instructs the Russians to look westward and learn from the hard-working, motivated Balts. Economically devastated Tallinn is Beverly Hills compared to Novosibirsk.

What do the Baltic States want? They don’t want to simply survive--they want to succeed. They want to join the flourishing family of industrial democracies. They want to compete with the West by meeting and exceeding Western standards in product design and quality, and in overall life-style.

A meat-packing factory manager in Utena, Lithuania, told me, “Our steaks and sausage could compete with Western products, if only we were allowed to prepare and package them correctly.” He feels shame and disgust for producing Soviet-quality meat. He is looking for American technical experts and investment dollars for new processing equipment. The Balts, with their enlightened minority policies, Western traditions and large emigre communities, have never been xenophobic. From the ministries to the central banks to the factories, Balts are ready to open up their books and expose them to critical review. Only the Westerners can help them clean out the rot. Only they can prescribe sound, even if necessarily bitter, remedies. Only they can guarantee true perestroika.

The Balts know that their economic rebirth demands the maintenance of excellent economic and political relations with the Soviet Union. Suggestions by Kremlin spokesmen that the Baltic states are planning economic warfare against the Soviet Union are ludicrous.

Progressive Baltic factory managers are carefully analyzing (to the best of their abilities) future markets in the West and East. A cheese factory director sees no markets in the West; he will sell to the Soviets. A furniture maker feels he can successfully compete in Europe and America with Scandinavian-style tables and bookcases--if he can continue importing wood from Siberia. A manufacturer of electric meters sees great demand for his product in the Soviet Union and the Third World. Their greatest fear is that the Soviets will declare economic war against the Baltics.

At the national level, Baltic economic leaders are developing a “trampoline” strategy. The Baltics, with their intimate knowledge of the Soviet economic culture, market and bureaucracy, would serve as the production, marketing and transportation “trampoline” for advanced goods, investments and services from West to East. Similar services would be provided for Soviet manufacturers and exporters of raw materials from East to West.

It was Gorbachev himself who suggested that the Baltic states could become the Soviet Union’s Hong Kong. The Balts are simply taking him at his word.

No one can suggest that economics are either the prime motivating or legitimating force for Baltic independence. History, culture and international law are key. It appears, however, that for Soviet policy makers, these latter issues are debatable and subject to interpretation.

But rotten wood is rotten wood.

A picture is being painted of Baltic leaders gone wild with nationalist fervor in a mad rush to bolt from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, thereby destroying it. This is a serious misrepresentation. If it truly reflects Soviet understanding of Baltic motivations, it is a dangerous delusion that will guarantee failure of Soviet policy toward the Baltic states and can only lead one to question the Soviet leadership’s comprehension of the magnitude of the economic crisis facing the Soviet Union itself.