Baltic States

TODAY'S Slovenia could be tomorrow's Slovakia, or Transylvania, not to mention the Baltic states and the other separatists who are breaking up the U.S.S.R. from within. What is the answer? Do we continue as before, by waving a wallet of money before them and advocating wisdom?In Yugoslavia's case, Europe seems to have missed the boat. But the question is a far wider one. There is a need for open-mindedness about risks posed by the pan-European situation, something that was lacking before the Yugoslav situation exploded.

MOSCOW -- Rebuffed by international criticism, Russia yesterday retreated from its decision to link a withdrawal of troops from the Baltic states to improved conditions for Russians living in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.But Col. Gen. Boris V. Gromov, the Russian deputy defense minister, warned it was "unlikely" that all Russian soldiers would be gone by 1994, as the Baltic states demand.Housing shortages in Russia and the immense cost of relocating troops have forced Moscow to push back its troop withdrawal plans.

On the 65th anniversary of using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, no doubt people who decry the use will be coming out of the woodwork to once again castigate the event. While the bomb was a weapon of war, it also became a weapon for peace as well. There can't be the slightest doubt that Stalin and the Soviet Union had czarist eyes on all of Europe, having already demonstrated that by the invasion of Poland, the Baltic States and Finland. The Soviets saw what the bomb does and that we were in position to use it again.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, United Nations officials are asking privately: If the Soviet Union disintegrates, who would inherit its powerful seat in the U.N. Security Council?"

What happened to the Baltic states through the deadly connivance of Hitler and Stalin has finally been reversed. With the granting of U.S. diplomatic recognition, the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is now "inexorable," in the word of President Bush, and, indeed, virtually an accomplished fact. The Soviet Union is in such disarray that Western acceptance of Baltic breakaway had become as important as Soviet acquiescence, which now seems only a matter of time.Nevertheless, it is of some interest that President Bush did not await formal action by Moscow despite administration assertions last week that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would be allowed to set the pace.

The changes in what used to be the Soviet Union seem endless.The Baltic states are establishing independence, Sverdlovsk is restoring its name to Yekaterinburg and Leningrad will return to St. Petersburg.Charles E. Lees Jr. and his colleagues in Maplewood, N.J., meanwhile, are re-sharpening their drafting pencils."The world is changing all the time, and so are maps," said Lees, vice president and cartographic editor-in-chief for the Hammond Map Co. "What's different about this is that there are so many changes happening so fast that affect so much."

ALTHOUGH Mikhail Gorbachev insists that "neither the internal nor the external policy has changed" in the Soviet Union, the truth is that everything has changed.The Soviet interventions in Lithuania and Latvia have demolished any lingering hopes that Gorbachev could transform the Soviet Union into a free association of republics. In essence, the Soviet Union has ceased to exist.The great question, which will be played out over the next months and years, is what will emerge in its stead.Before the Jan. 13 invasion of Lithuania there was still hope that the republics could attain political independence peacefully and go on to freely establish economic ties that would benefit them all. This still may occur but not under the leadership of Gorbachev, who has clearly chosen to save the empire by falling back on the army, secret police and central bureaucracy.

BERLIN -- Germany's prompt diplomatic recognition of the Baltic states yesterday marks an abrupt change of tactics for the government, which had been under fire at home for its relatively passive foreign policy.The sudden recognition of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania put Germany in the unusual position of acting before the United States or its other major allies.German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher then went to a meeting of European Community foreign ministers and successfully argued for the community's recognition of the three republics.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush declared yesterday that the United States has a responsibility to nurture the young democracies of the newly independent Baltic nations and pledged to start the process by normalizing trade relations and creating a Peace Corps for the Baltics.At a White House tribute to the Baltic diplomats here who kept alive the symbols of their countries' sovereignty despite a 51-year occupation by the Soviet Union, Mr. Bush also promised to work for the quick release of $61 million in gold reservesheld for safekeeping in the United States after Soviet annexation of the Baltics in 1940.

MOSCOW -- Leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia appealed for international support yesterday against what they said was a new campaign of force and intimidation directed by Moscow to disrupt Baltic independence.Their appeal followed a series of attacks by Soviet troops in the last four days on border posts set up by the Baltic states along their boundaries. They were carried out largely by "Black Beret" troops based in Riga, Latvia, and in Vilnius, Lithuania, who take orders from the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs but increasingly resemble a vigilante force.