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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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112089
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11208900.059
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1990-09-19
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WORLD, Page 50America AbroadWashington's Captive PolicyBy Strobe Talbott/TALLINN
The Soviet empire is disintegrating so quickly and in so many
ways that neither Moscow nor Washington has been able to adjust its
policies fast enough to keep up with events. Last week, while the
East German regime went into free fall, nationalists in the
Estonian parliament prepared to consider a resolution that
explicitly challenges the legitimacy of Soviet rule and implicitly
raises the possibility of an eventual declaration of independence.
Late last month Mikhail Gorbachev privately encouraged the
leaders of Estonia and the other two Baltic republics, Latvia and
Lithuania, to keep pushing for "self-determination." But, Gorbachev
continued, ``you must not demand that you leave the U.S.S.R." There
were nods in the room from those who fear a violent Russian
backlash against the Balts for their self-assertiveness and against
Gorbachev himself for his tolerance of separatism.
"We must guarantee that the process of evolving toward
sovereignty in Estonia doesn't jeopardize perestroika in the Soviet
Union," says Arnold Green, 69, a veteran government official in
Tallinn. "Otherwise, it will be a catastrophe for all of us."
But the caution of the Old Guard is giving way to the
impatience of younger Estonians. They are gambling that the
economic crisis of the U.S.S.R. is so severe and so all absorbing
for the Kremlin -- and that preserving the goodwill of the outside
world is so crucial -- that not even hard-liners will have the
stomach for a crackdown. For a while, the Balts may settle for some
kind of semiautonomous status in a far looser Soviet confederation.
But in these dizzying times, "semi" may become a euphemism for
almost total, and "a while" may be a matter of a few years rather
than decades.
The U.S. has its own Baltic dilemma. The American government
never accepted the Soviet annexation of the republics 49 years ago.
To this day, the State Department recognizes "legations" of
anti-Communist emigres as the "representatives of the last free and
legal governments" of their captive homelands. American diplomats
have long avoided traveling to the Baltic capitals of Tallinn, Riga
and Vilnius, since going there requires Moscow's permission.
The diplomatic boycott made moral and political sense as long
as Baltic independence seemed an impossible dream. Now the policy
is applied too rigidly. An Estonian Deputy Prime Minister, Rein
Otsason, and the republic's party ideologist, Mikk Titma, wanted
to come to the U.S. recently to lay the foundation for what may be
the next free government of their country. But the U.S. delayed the
visitors' visas and gave them the official cold shoulder once they
arrived.
"The U.S. doesn't recognize Moscow's right to rule Estonia,"
complains Rein Veideman, a leader of the pro-independence Popular
Front, "but it also doesn't recognize Tallinn's right."
The months ahead are going to require finesse on everyone's
part. The Balts have to be at least as clever as they are bold in
defining sovereignty. Moscow is going to have to adopt an
increasingly imaginative and elastic definition of what it means
to be a republic of the U.S.S.R. And American policymakers ought
to acknowledge that the kinds of people it once considered Kremlin
quislings are now champions of the goal that the U.S. itself has
advocated for nearly a half-century.