
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990                   TAG: 9005110659
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: C.E. SMITH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S SOVIET-LITHUANIAN CONCERN

TO JUDGE from recent news and commentary, one would think that there was a free and freedom-loving little country called Lithuania that was occupied and subjugated by the Soviet Union in 1939. In fact, Lithuania was an independent country for about 20 out of the past several hundred years.

In 1569 Lithuania was politically united with Poland and became part of the Russian Empire when Poland was partitioned in 1795. Since this event preceded the Russian Revolution by well over 100 years, the post-revolutionary government considered this territory a part of Russia. This fact is not lessened because it came about as a result of an unsavory deal with German government. Your recent letter-writers have not been very clear on these points.

They also fail to mention that for most of its brief period of independence, Lithuania was under the control of a right-wing dictator, Antanas Smetona. Nor do they point out that the Sajudas movement's knight-and-horse banner was the symbol of the Smetona government; or that following Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Lithuanians declared independence and became his helpers in carrying out the "final solution" for the Jewish problem. After the war, the victorious Allies restored Lithuania to the Soviet Union.

None of this means Lithuania should not separate from the Soviet Union. However, it should do so in accordance with Soviet law. Aside from all of the posturing involved in diplomatic recognition, Lithuania is a part of the Soviet Union. The people who can legislate and enforce laws constitute the government of any part of the world, even if no one likes the situation.

It also seems obvious that the precipitous actions and intransigent attitude of the Lithuanian leaders have been based upon the assumption that the United States was going to rush to their defense. It is to be hoped that they will now assume a more reasonable stance.

In his May 1 letter, James T. Jordan brings up what is getting to be a tiresome comparison between the Lithuanian situation and the American Civil War. This line holds that the Confederacy was not allowed to separate because its states had freely joined the Union in the first place. If this argument is derived from a general principle, it means that one can never cancel or nullify an arrangement entered into voluntarily. Not so.

Almost all of the present governments of the world (I can't think of an exception) control an area they took from some other people through the use of force. This is the way the world works. I wish it were not so.

Maybe it will not always be so. For now, the best thing that the United States can do is to let the Russians and the Lithuanians work out their own problems without outside interference.

by CNB