Is This Crackdown Necessary? : Latvia--another reason why February summit is up in the air

Even before Soviet troops shot their way into police headquarters in Latvia’s capital city of Riga Sunday, there was a 24-hour Baltic watch at the State Department.

Just what the group is watching must be as puzzling for the State Department as for the rest of the country.

Does the Riga assault by a relative handful of elite “black beret” forces mean that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has lost control of Soviet reactionaries demanding repression as well as Soviet liberals demanding reform? Is there any other way to interpret the second deadly Soviet attack in a Baltic capital in a week?

Gorbachev desperately needs aid, trading privileges and arms treaties to keep at bay a Cold War he cannot afford. He must know how severely the West’s patience was tested when Soviet troops and tanks killed 14 Lithuanians while blasting their way into a radio and television center in the city of Vilnius on Jan. 13.

The Riga attack was a smaller version of the slaughter at Vilnius. The relative handful of troopers withdrew within hours after they stormed the building, causing speculation that Moscow ordered them out.

But the attacks have one chilling thing in common. In both cases, troopers said they moved in at the request of, and in support of, right-wing Communists who oppose the independence movements in both Baltic countries and obviously admire the Stalinist approach to law and order.

True, the West so far has responded only with talk. But the White House says a mid-February summit between President Bush and Gorbachev, at which an arms control agreement was to be signed, now is “up in the air.” The U.S. Senate wants to cancel technical exchanges and withdraw support that Moscow needs to get deeply involved in world trade.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people took to Moscow’s streets to protest the attacks and demand more attention to reforms. It may not be the anarchy that doomsday analysts keeping predicting. But it surely isn’t far from chaos.