Lithuanians Vote Today on Independence Issue : Baltics: Republic’s leaders expect to show Moscow uncontestable proof the people desire to secede from the U.S.S.R.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has rejected it as a meaningless exercise, but Lithuania’s leaders expect today to deliver uncontestable proof of their people’s desire for a complete break with Moscow.

Starting at 7 a.m., residents of this Baltic land will be able to go to the place where they normally vote and pick up a slip of paper that asks: “Do you approve of the Lithuanian state being an independent democratic republic?”

By crossing out the word “No,” Lithuania’s 2.7 million voters, called to take part in their republic’s first referendum, will have a chance to show their support for a course steered by President Vytautas Landsbergis and his allies in Parliament, which proclaimed Lithuania independent last March.

Four days before the non-binding plebiscite, Gorbachev voided the result in advance, saying the vote could only be interpreted as an attempt to block another nationwide referendum that has been scheduled by the Soviet Parliament for March 17.

Gorbachev, struggling to pull his country together, wants next month’s national vote to prove the extent of support for a “renewed” Soviet Union. However, Landsbergis has repeatedly stressed that Lithuania will not participate in what he terms the affairs of an alien country.

The Soviet army attack on Vilnius broadcast facilities last month that killed 13 unarmed civilians has left political nerves here raw, and Communists and other pro-Moscow forces--apparently with the aid of the Soviet armed forces--have campaigned for a boycott of today’s balloting.

Another eleventh-hour development many found ominous was a telegram from Col. Gen. Fyodor Kuzmin, commander of the Baltic Military District, alerting Landsbergis that 10 days of “staff exercises” involving troop movements, would begin in Lithuania and neighboring Latvia and Estonia on Sunday, the day that ballots are to be brought to Vilnius from throughout the republic for a final official tally.

What Landsbergis is counting on is an impressive enough show of support to prove that his government, Lithuania’s first non-Communist leadership since the Soviet takeover 50 years ago, still has the backing of the citizenry, despite the Kremlin’s offer of a new national federation of Soviet republics equal in rights.

In the event of an overwhelming affirmative vote, “Gorbachev won’t be able to keep deceiving public opinion . . . either in Russia or the world,” Landsbergis said in an interview.

The Lithuanian leader acknowledged that the referendum--called officially a “poll”--will have no practical effect. “No vote will change the situation in one day,” Landsbergis said.

But a show of massive popular backing would greatly strengthen the hand of the Vilnius government in its upcoming negotiations with the Kremlin on future economic and political relations and would further legitimize Lithuania’s efforts to win diplomatic recognition abroad.

In the shop windows of this old Baltic city, now shivering through a glacial February, pro-secession signs put the choice starkly: Either vote for the independence that Lithuania enjoyed between the world wars, or continue living in an enslaved land.

One unknown quantity is whether Russian, Pole and other ethnic minorities who make up about 20% of the republic’s 3.8 million people will vote today, and if so, how. Some opinion polls have found that 14% and more of non-Lithuanians favor secession.

“I have just one reservation: How will my children, who have Russian names, end up being treated?” said a middle-aged Russian woman, a native of Vilnius, who said that despite her feelings, she was planning to vote for independence.

Some opponents of the Landsbergis government admit that the ayes will largely carry the day, but claim that the issue as worded on the ballot is so fuzzy that even a landslide vote for “independence” and “democracy” won’t mean a thing.

“It’s a kind of question that can get a 100% positive answer,” Juosas Jrmalavitius, chief o f ideological affairs for the hard-line pro-Moscow Communist Party, said in an interview. “Only fascists or the mentally impaired would be against.”

Jrmalavitius and his comrades have made some effort to discourage voter turnout, but their actions have been half-hearted. Jrmalavitius said the Lithuanian Communist Party might try to bypass the government and organize the republic’s participation in the March referendum sought by Gorbachev.

In Kaunas, a central Lithuanian city, a Soviet army helicopter on Thursday scattered leaflets calling on voters to abstain from today’s voting, Lithuanian officials said.

“Before expressing your opinion, think over your action again and again,” the broadside from the Communist-dominated citizens committee warned. “Your ‘yes’ means the secession of the republic from the U.S.S.R. . . . it means the destruction of Lithuania. And if you say yes today, it will be too late to say no tomorrow.”