TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091189/09118900.033

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 64 lines

WORLD, Page 40

SOVIET UNION

The Language of Unrest

As Moldavia simmers, the Baltics fire back at Moscow


    Language is frequently not only the vehicle for making
statements but also a statement in and of itself. The legislature
of the southwestern Soviet republic of Moldavia, which borders
Rumania, last week declared its native tongue -- which is virtually
identical to Rumanian -- its official language. Moldavia thus
became the fifth Soviet republic this year (after Tadzhikistan and
the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) to establish
linguistic independence from the Russian language. In an effort to
accommodate the republic's ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, about
27% of the 4.3 million population, legislators eventually added a
vaguely worded amendment that Russian will continue to be used in
some instances.

    Far from placated by that move, non-Moldavian activists
denounced the law and staged strikes at more than 100 factories.
In Moscow Pravda accused the ethnic majority of subjecting
non-Moldavians to "moral terror." But thousands of Moldavians
gathered in the main square of Kishinev, the capital, to
demonstrate their support for the measure. Many waved Moldavia's
traditional red-yellow-and-blue flag and chanted, "Russians go
home!"

    If the loudest shouts occurred in Moldavia last week, the
bitterest words came from the Baltic republics. Two weeks ago the
Communist Party Central Committee issued a broadside accusing
"extremists" in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of whipping up
"nationalist hysteria" on the 50th anniversary of the
Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that led to the Soviet annexation of the
three states. At first the attack jolted Baltic progressives, who
had just been granted permission to carry out wide-ranging economic
reforms. Some regional Communist leaders who have been tolerant of
unofficial nationalist movements quickly sought ways to ease
tensions with Moscow. Estonian party leader Vaino Valjas, for
example, assured Soviet television viewers that "separatism is not
our slogan." In Latvia party chief Janis Vagris warned local
activists not to "irresponsibly rock the common boat."

    By last week, however, the nationalists were firing back their
own rhetorical rockets. Meeting in the Latvian capital of Riga, the
leaders of the region's three unofficial political movements
rejected the Central Committee statement, calling it a "sinister
and dangerous document for the cause of democracy." Its authors,
the Baltic reformers said, "looked like the younger brothers" of
those who produced the Nazi-Soviet agreement. For good measure,
Dainis Ivans, president of the Latvian Popular Front, announced
that his republic plans to go well beyond the reforms so far
authorized by the Kremlin, adopting a program of "full economic and
political independence" from Moscow as a prelude to eventual
"complete independent statehood."

    Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov insisted
that the Moscow document had been "worked out with the
participation of all members of the Politburo, including the
General Secretary." Gorbachev might well have authorized the
Baltic-bashing as a sop to disgruntled party conservatives who fear
his liberal policies are getting out of control. What better way
for the Soviet leader to keep his reform image untarnished and at
the same time dampen separatist fervor than to let the
conservatives vent their anger in his absence? But if the Soviet
leader was indeed trying to have it both ways, he badly
underestimated the caliber of the return fire.