January 31--A potentially disastrous development involving the Baltic republics of the USSR together with Azerbaijan and Armenia could pose a danger to the very integrity of the Soviet Union as a multinational state and lay the basis for its disintegration.A dispatch from Moscow to the New York Times of Jan. 30 makes this clear. Times correspondent Francis X. Clines writes:
"A new sort of political initiative has emerged beyond the Kremlin's orbit with the resourceful Baltic separatist movements persuading their counterparts in the feuding southern republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan to hold peace talks in the Latvian republic.
"The talks, which are to begin on Thursday in Riga, the Latvian capital, are being treated by the three Baltic nationalist movements with all the care and protocol of a diplomatic initiative.
"The peace gathering amounts to the Baltic republics' latest challenge to Moscow's central authority, an attempt to show that effective governance in the Soviet Union has shifted to decentralized populist politics capable of dealing with problems that have the Kremlin in crisis. Armenia and Azerbaijan accepted the offer as a means of dealing with their conflict beyond the purview of the Kremlin.
"Notably absent from the conference, whose details were carefully explained in Riga today after an initial announcement on Sunday, will be the central government of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.''
What the press here leaves out
Such is the situation as seen from the imperialist side, which is obviously delighted with this development. Of course, an exceptionally significant element is left out, and not only in this dispatch. It is also played down in the USSR itself, where it is given, in our view, only perfunctory attention. That is the role of the U.S. in this struggle of the nationalities, both in the Baltic republics and in the South.
To see the influence of the U.S., we should go back to the very beginning of the massive demonstrations in both Armenia and Azerbaijan. As soon as they took on a violent character, and scarcely before there were any mass exoduses from either republic, the U.S. government demonstrated that it had fully prepared for such contingencies. Within days of the eruption of violence, Washington already had in place reception centers for Armenian refugees in Italy and in the U.S.
Everything was ready
Even more significant was the speed with which visa applications for the refugees were processed and they were transported to their destinations. The personnel of the various refugee groupings and institutions which deal with these matters were astonished. It so sharply contrasted with U.S. policy on refugees from other countries. In particular, it was noted how indifferent and harsh the U.S. has been to those fleeing political persecution south of the U.S. border. Some, like the so-called boat people from Haiti, have been left to die rather than be allowed ashore.
Nevertheless, the sharp contrast in the treatment of refugees was not brought to the attention of the American public. The protests of some Azerbaijani groups regarding the whole matter were not even discussed in the capitalist press. Be that as it may, it showed that the U.S. was effectively strengthening an axis with the Armenian bourgeois groupings, and was doing it virtually unnoticed, at least on the surface, by the USSR authorities.
Aftermath of the earthquake
Another aspect was the devastating earthquake in Armenia. This catastrophe aroused the sympathy of the whole world. Under such circumstances, anyone willing to help was of course welcomed. It is to be noted, however, that generally when earthquakes or natural disasters take place, even those governments most closely allied with or friendly to the imperialist powers become suspicious when they see an excessive number of foreigners suddenly deluge the country, although apparently it is all done for good and humanitarian reasons.
Such was the case, for instance, when floods hit Bangladesh, and again when the great earthquake took place in Mexico. The Mexican government felt obliged from the very beginning to let the U.S. government know just what was required and what was not. In a number of African countries where famine has followed drought, there has been the same caution--that their vulnerability would be taken advantage of by the predatory imperialists in the name of generosity and aid.
When the catastrophe took place in Armenia, the Soviet government virtually invited the U.S. to send any and all material and other aid. This was contrary to earlier Soviet practice, which had been completely restrictive and indeed secretive about any kind of natural or other disaster.
The capitalist press widely applauded the move as a gesture of openness and glasnost. But the CIA is the CIA. It took every opportunity to widen its penetration of the area. Thus this openness, to the applause of the capitalist press, led to a deep penetration by the U.S. It was able to solicit leading figures and begin to win over whatever friendly sources the central government had in Armenia. From the point of view of the different class systems, it's equivalent to inviting the enemy into your home and giving him unrestricted access.
One must also remember that any country which undergoes such a devastating experience inevitably exposes all the vulnerabilities of a political, social or environmental character which most countries would rather keep to themselves. That's why China would not allow any help from the U.S. when it experienced the great earthquake of 1976. Even imperialist countries have innumerable restrictions on assistance from foreign governments during times of disaster, since a great deal is revealed in times of stress and no one wants to be put in an exposed position.
This is what has to be kept in mind as we examine what happened next.
U.S. ambassador tours area
When in July 1989 the strife between Armenia and Azerbaijan took on an especially violent character, U.S. Ambassador Jack F. Matlock decided to take a tour of the area right in the midst of the conflict. How the Soviet authorities could permit an accredited ambassador to visit an area where civil strife was occurring is a mystery.
Not so long ago a massive rebellion took place in Liberty City, a Black community in Miami. Would the U.S. have allowed the Soviet Ambassador to tour the area? They even prohibited local reporters!
Finally, the USSR had to lodge a complaint--not because Matlock had toured the area (they had allowed that) but because an axis had been revealed between Matlock and perhaps the most important figure in the U.S. Congress regarding the struggle there. He is none other than the low-profile Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pell is the essential figure in pushing pro-Armenian resolutions in the Senate and is apparently in close contact with U.S. Ambassador Matlock. All this has the blessings of the Bush administration.
Complaint by Soviet Foreign Ministry
That this network could function so openly forced the Soviet Foreign Ministry to finally make a complaint and have it widely publicized. But this happened only on Nov. 19, 1989, and was reported in the New York Times the next day. It complained that a second pro-Armenian resolution had been passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and it noted that this time it followed closely on the heels of Ambassador Matlock's tour of the area and was evidently part of a deliberate policy. The ministry said that such conduct ``can provoke destabilization and bring new suffering'' to the peoples concerned.
The USSR complained that the resolution came at a delicate moment in the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and hinted that it was provocative. However, all of this, which shows the hand of U.S. imperialism in the southern region, was given scant notice in the USSR. Pravda merely reported the foreign ministry's complaint. There was no effort to really come to grips with the problem of U.S. intervention in what they themselves call "the internal affairs of the USSR.''
There are many ways the USSR could highlight the problem and make the world aware of its significance. One would be to introduce a resolution in the Soviet Parliament. By way of amendment, they could also introduce a supplementary amendment supporting independence for Puerto Rico, which seems to have long been forgotten. But that would mean breaking up the agreements of accommodation with the U.S.
Under the Stalin regime, of course, just about all and any opposition, whether from the left or the right, was indiscriminately branded pro-imperialist. Now, however, there is an accommodating and even ingratiating position in relation to U.S. imperialism. Is it part of an overall agreement?
U.S. influence in Baltics
It is scarcely necessary to go over the influence of Western imperialism in the Baltic republics. It is not for nothing that the U.S. has kept open legations supposed to represent Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia when virtually the rest of the world paid no attention whatever to them. Then the State Department every year sponsored an annual Captive Nations Week. No, this doesn't mean the nations held captive by the U.S., like the Native people of this country, Puerto Rico, Samoa, and the Hawaiians. It refers to the Baltic peoples. Over the years, even though their demonstrations might have drawn only a few hundred people, they were given wide publicity.
It is against this background that one has to view the invitation to mediate the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict by the so-called popular fronts of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Not only are these groups pro-imperialist, but some are extreme right-wing, even pro-Nazi bourgeois elements. How can they suddenly become the mediators for the southern republics, inviting them to Riga for a "peace conference'' to demonstrate their intentions of separating from the USSR?
The Baltic republics are among the most developed industrially in the USSR, and the bourgeois elements there have never shown anything but contempt for the underdeveloped southern republics. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the historical background of these so-called popular fronts is immediately suspicious of this fraudulent mediation effort. What is it but a threadbare trick set up by the CIA to establish some coalition of the Soviet nationalities in order to detach them from the USSR?
No honest representative of the nationalities involved would ever think of forming such a coalition on their own! But such is now the situation. As the Times says, it poses a challenge to the central government.
The issue here has to be clearly understood.
Right of self-determination
Every nationality in the USSR under the Constitution (even as amended) has the right of self-determination, up to and including secession. And even if the Constitution were changed, this is the Leninist concept of the right to self-determination, which we firmly and unequivocally support.
But it is something absolutely different to allow the U.S., the fundamental class enemy of the USSR and of all the oppressed people of the world, to firmly implant itself in the Baltic republics (an extremely sensitive area from the point of view of the security and defense of the USSR), and get another foothold in the South.
What independent country would allow that? Wouldn't its obligation be to show what the imperialists have been doing there on virtually a day-to-day basis?
Once more, the economic reforms
It is true, of course, that Gorbachev's economic reforms have not only accentuated the strife but in fact have deliberately set the nationalities against each other. They have undercut the economic security of the less developed areas in particular by granting individual enterprises so-called independence. This decentralization turns out to be a way to unload economic problems on them.
Instead of planning more efficiently than their predecessors, instead of living up to their promises of resolving the problems that the previous regimes had ignored, they seem to be completely baffled and unprepared; all they can do is castigate the previous administrations. (As one Soviet coal miner is reported to have said, "It is easy to pull the tail of a dead lion.")
Gorbachev himself seemed completely perplexed when he went to Armenia after the disaster and tried in his usual manner to talk to the people. Instead of asking questions about the earthquake, they bombarded him with questions of a political character regarding alleged atrocities by Azerbaijan and Armenia's demand for the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In recent speeches both President Gorbachev and Politburo member V.A. Medvedev have tried to appeal to Party members to reject a split along nationalist lines. But nowhere do they mention the hostile hand of U.S. imperialism.
Nor is there any attempt to reach out to the workers and speak in the name of proletarian internationalism as against a bourgeois popular front. Nowhere do they speak to the workers of Latvia, for instance, about their glorious history in the struggle to defend Petrograd from the White Guards after the Revolution. Nor do they remind the workers of who freed them from Nazi control, of the lives lost by the Red Army and the Partisans.
Why not speak to the workers, instead of giving out a mishmash of bourgeois eclecticism? Any head of a bourgeois multinational state could say the same things that Gorbachev is now saying, with minor changes. Is brute force the only alternative?