Vilnius

MOSCOW -- Despite claims to the contrary by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other Soviet officials, support among Russians and other ethnic minorities in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for independence from the Soviet Union is substantial and growing fast in the wake of recent violence by Soviet troops, polls show.The polls show the misleading nature of a barrage of telegrams and letters from Russian-speakers repeatedly cited by Mr. Gorbachev in backing his hard line against Baltic independence and the elected leaders who advocate it. A former KGB general said last week that such telegram campaigns are often organized by the security agency.

PARIS -- The European Parliament suspended nearly $1.5 billion in food and technical aid to the Soviet Union yesterday, delivering a stern condemnation of Soviet repression in Lithuania and Latvia.The parliament's decision to withhold approval of the aid package came a week after European Community foreign ministers warned Moscow against further military crackdowns in the Baltics, following the Jan. 13 deaths of 14 people in the army takeover of a broadcast center in Vilnius, Lithuania.Last weekend, the Soviet army killed five more people when it stormed Riga police headquarters in a drive to reassert control of Latvia.

MOSCOW -- There were growing signs that the Kremlin was preparing to follow up the military crackdown in Lithuania with similar actions in the other Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia.In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius the National Salvation Committee, the new pro-Moscow body being used as an apparent front for inviting the Soviet military to intervene, called yesterday for direct rule by President Mikhail Gorbachev.Similar calls were heard as well in Latvia and Estonia at pro-Moscow rallies organized by Communist Party leaders loyal to Moscow.

MOSCOW -- The nation's chief prosecutor absolved the Soviet army of all wrongdoing in January's bloody assault on a broadcast center in Lithuania that claimed 14 lives and earned Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev the world's condemnation.Hours after the prosecutor's report was released yesterday, Soviet troops conducted identity checks outside key buildings in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, local officials told Western reporters in telephone interviews.Several thousand residents entered the square in front of the Parliament building last night after Lithuania's President Vytautas Landsbergis went on television to appeal for their support.

VILNIUS, U.S.S.R. -- Lithuania is like a Baltic mouse that roared. Its problem will be finding a way to make Moscow listen.Political leaders in Lithuania had been certain of success in the plebiscite for independence over the weekend, but the sheer scale of the triumph staggered them. More than 90 percent of those voting favored independence from the Soviet Union.It was "a victory against lies, against attempts to scare us, against fear," President Vytautas Landsbergis said yesterday. In televised message to his countryman, he said, "Today, we did good work and took one more step along the road."

MOSCOW -- President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said yesterday he learned of Sunday's bloody Soviet army assault on Lithuanian demonstrators only after it took place, but he made it clear that he approved of the army's action, in which 14 people died and 163 were injured.Mr. Gorbachev's first public comments on the bloodshed left little doubt that he is determined to force Lithuania and the other Baltic republics to repeal their independence declarations and rejoin the U.S.S.R., even if it costs lives.

MOSCOW -- The paratroopers who gave Lithuania a scare Monday night by setting up checkpoints all over central Vilnius returned to their barracks early yesterday morning. The two young men they had detained were released unharmed.But the incident had already caught the world's attention, making headlines all over Europe, the United States and Japan as political leaders wrestle with the question of how much economic aid to offer the Soviet Union.On the eve of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's departure for Norway to give the Nobel Peace Prize address, the news from Vilnius sounded a dissonant counter-note.

MOSCOW -- Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, chief of the Soviet KGB, is a busy man. But he found time last week to meet with the leaders of the Centrist Bloc of Political Parties and Movements, one of the most dubious of the dozens of political groups to spring up in this country over the last two years."

KLAIPEDA, Lithuania -- In the central square of this old port city, as in the central squares of thousands of other Soviet cities, stands the obligatory statue of V. I. Lenin striding vigorously into the future.But for nearly six months it has been flanked by a pair of armored personnel carriers.A soldier with a Kalashnikov submachine gun slung across his back shivers in Lenin's shadow. Two more soldiers and two Ministry of Internal Affairs troopers police the perimeter of the monument. The rope fence bears signs in Lithuanian, Russian and Polish politely explaining that anyone attacking the "guarded object" will be shot.

At the corner of Conkling Street and Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, a head looks over the neighborhood like a bodiless sentinel. The olive-toned, mustachioed bust takes in a colorful panorama: a pizzeria to the north and a pawnbroker to the west. Starting this weekend, when you hock that gold watch or grab a quick slice of pizza, Frank Zappa will be watching. Two years after Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, donated a $50,000 bust of the Baltimore-born rocker to Charm City, it will be installed Sunday at the Southeast Anchor Library in a daylong celebration.