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As a popular saying in this northern Baltic state puts it: Think nine times and speak on the tenth. Estonia's major contribution to the Baltic reform movement has primarily been new ideas, whether blueprints for popular-front movements or drafts of laws regulating economic "cost accounting" at the local level. But when Estonians do speak, they get a hearing. Last November the Estonian supreme soviet passed amendments to the local constitution, investing ultimate legal authority with the republic rather than with Moscow. That act of defiance brought on a finger-wagging lecture from Gorbachev. But the tiny Baltic state held its ground, and Moscow pursued the matter no further. Says party chief Valjas: "Estonian persistence has brought results."
Valjas has astutely chosen compromise rather than confrontation with the powerful Estonian Popular Front. He has even turned over the key state- planning portfolio to economist Edgar Savisaar, a member of the movement's executive council. During elections last March, the Popular Front did not run its own candidates against party regulars. Valjas garnered 90% of the votes in his district, but a poll for a Finnish newspaper taken just after the balloting showed that if true multiparty elections had been held, the Communists would have placed a distant second to the Estonian Popular Front (16.3% to 35.2%).
The same questionnaire revealed that when ethnic Estonians were asked about the future of the republic, 55% opted for complete independence. A coalition of small nationalist groups has launched a campaign to register those who < lived in Estonia during its years of independence (1918 to 1940) and their descendants in order to convene an Estonian National Congress to discuss the fate of the nation. Organizers deny that they are creating a rival parliamentary body, but the fact that some 100,000 people have responded has caused concern within the ranks of the party and the Popular Front, and deepened the mistrust of the Russian minority.
The Estonian leadership has come under virulent attack from militant Russians for promoting legislation that gives priority to the language and culture of ethnic Estonians. Gorbachev may have taken a conciliatory approach with the nation's striking miners, but the authorities in Tallinn signaled last week that they were growing impatient with Russian agitators who have been using labor protests to press their demands. The authorities invoked a resolution recently passed by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to ban the strike and issued a call for "common sense." As Popular Front leader Veidemann notes, "Our greatest danger lies in creating two separate societies, as in Northern Ireland and Lebanon."
LATVIA