Gorbachev’s hand was forced by his old nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic. By a vote of 907 to 13, the Russian parliament adopted a nonbinding declaration of sovereignty, stating that Russian law takes precedence over Soviet law. It’s one thing for the tiny Baltic republics to declare independence; Russia, with half of the country’s population and two thirds of its territory, is too big to ignore and too strong to slap down. Instead, Gorbachev proposed his federation formula and went to mend fences with Yeltsin. “We shook hands, and we met each other halfway,” Yeltsin boasted later.
A welcome byproduct of Gorbachev’s maneuver was a lessening of tensions with Lithuania. He met with the presidents of the three Baltic republics and appeared to ease somewhat his conditions for negotiations. At the weekend, after Moscow eased its embargo, the Lithuanian government agreed to suspend its declaration of independence in return for a complete end to Soviet economic sanctions.
Gorbachev didn’t explain how the new federalism would work; he probably doesn’t yet know himself. There is no guarantee that the republics will be satisfied with whatever degree of autonomy he grants them. Yegor Ligachev, Gorbachev’s most prominent conservative critic, warned that “our Soviet federation is being broken into pieces.” A Gorbachev aide insisted that “a free union of sovereign governments will not mean collapse or disintegration of the Soviet Union.” But Gorbachev is not in full control of events; last week the Soviet Parliament told him he cannot even raise the price of bread. Under the increasingly chaotic circumstances, if Gorbachev’s federation plan goes through, some republics may decide to take the sovereignty and run.
