Briefing Paper : They’re Divvying Up the Soviet Humpty--Dumpty

ARMENIA

Levon Ter-Petrosyan

Party Membership: Armenian Pan-National Movement; former political prisoner.

Quote: “Without a doubt, the Union will break up, and it will be a peaceful process except for isolated incidents.”

Ter-Petrosyan is well-traveled and highly educated, a doctor of philosophy whose erudition and levelheadedness have earned him great respect in the West. The 46-year-old Syrian-born president was imprisoned in 1988 as one of the members of the committee demanding the annexation of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

Uniquely, he is guiding his republic toward independence within the strictures set by Soviet law, even scheduling a Sept. 21 referendum on the issue. Rivals accuse him of moving too slowly, but Ter-Petrosyan’s quiet firmness is not in doubt. “It’s impossible to force us to our knees,” he told a crowd last spring. “No one can prevent us from continuing along the road to independence.” His cultivation of Western contacts, aided by the far-flung Armenian diaspora, should stand him in good stead as his republic pursues that goal.

AZERBAIJAN

Ayaz Mutalibov

Party Membership: Communist since 1963, resigned party leadership posts following the anti-Gorbachev coup.

Quote: “I am astonished when people say we should sit at the negotiating table with Armenia. . . . What should I talk about with Ter-Petrosyan? Beg him to stop firing on us?”

Mutalibov, 53, began his career at a land reclamation institute, so it’s fitting that he has seized on territorial disputes as a way to boost his popularity. His stance on Nagorno-Karabakh and other ethnic Armenian enclaves has been unbendingly nationalistic: “Nagorno-Karabakh is an autonomous territory in Azerbaijan and we, not they, provide for its constitutional rights.”

In savage tones, he has accused Mikhail S. Gorbachev of destroying much under perestroika but building little. Mutalibov was visiting Iran when the anti-Gorbachev putsch occurred, and he welcomed the event in comments to reporters that he later denied. His resignation last week from his party posts should not affect his standing as supreme leader of Azerbaijan, which proclaimed independence last week.

BYELORUSSIA

Vyacheslav Kebich

Party Membership: Resigned his Communist Party posts last week.

Quote: “Byelorussia does not get a single dollar for its fertilizers.”

With the resignation under fire of former President Nikolai Dementei for having done nothing to oppose the anti-Gorbachev putsch, this onetime engineer turned Byelorussian prime minister became the key leader in the republic. Since beginning to work for the Communist Party in 1985, Kebich, 55, has devoted his primary attention to the economy rather than independence, bemoaning Moscow’s grip over production, distribution and pricing.

Byelorussian Popular Front leader Zinon Pozdniak has called Kebich “the kind of leader who knows and understands more than he can accomplish.” Before the coup, his republic, long docile and ruled by Communist conservatives, had made no real moves toward independence, and anti-Communist activists contend that its vote to break away from the union was only a ploy to guarantee that the old guard retains power.

ESTONIA

Arnold Ruutel

Party Membership: Communist Party member since 1964; quit to support secession drive.

Quote: “We’d like the U.S. (financial) presence to increase.”

While leading a long battle for the restoration of Estonia’s independence, the silver-haired, distinguished Ruutel, 63, has cultivated Western support and sought better relations with neighboring Soviet republics. Early this year Estonia signed an economic treaty with Russia, with Ruutel calling cooperation with Yeltsin the only way to counter the threat of Kremlin dictatorship.

A visit to a U.S. law firm in 1990 led to accusations by his political rival, Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar, of involvement with the CIA--a charge Ruutel vigorously denies. He has refused to sign Gorbachev’s proposed new Union Treaty. But he acknowledges that for an independent Estonia, the ethnic Russian population, which is in the majority in some northeastern regions, will present grave problems.

GEORGIA

Zviad Gamsakhurdia

Party Membership: Round Table-Free Georgia; former political prisoner.

Quote: “All my life I was in the opposition and fought against the government. Now I am the government.”

Swept into power last October in Georgia’s first multi-party elections, Gamsakhurdia, 52, gained popularity by voicing his nationalist, anti-Soviet views. He has agitated for independence since age 17, when, according to an acquaintance, he would “spend the day making plans to free Georgia.” In the 1970s, he was imprisoned on charges of disseminating anti-Soviet propaganda.

He wears well-cut suits, writes poetry, speaks five languages and has translated Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg into Georgian. His cultured background belies the fierceness with which he combats his political foes, some of whom call him a dictator. He has offered to mediate the ethnic conflict between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan, but in his own republic adamantly defends Georgian sovereignty over the restless Ossetian minority. Advocates of Ossetian autonomy are “direct agents of the Kremlin, its tools and terrorists,” he declared.

KAZAKHSTAN

Nursultan Nazarbayev

Party Membership: Communist Party member since 1962; resigned last week as Kazakhstan party’s first secretary.

Quote: “The euphoria of victory is quickly turning into aggrandizement on the part of the victors (meaning Yeltsin and the Russian leadership).”

The burly Nazarbayev, 51, whose hobbies are tennis and reading, worked at a blast furnace shop for 10 years, which may have given him his frank, no-nonsense manner. He runs the largest republic after Russia and has emerged as the No. 1 politician in Soviet Central Asia. All eyes will be on the relationship he fashions with Yeltsin, whom he has accused of seeking “a Russian empire.”

Last Friday, Nazarbayev and Russian leaders agreed on the need to hold talks with “all members of the former U.S.S.R.” on future forms of cooperation, especially in economic and military affairs. But as a flap over possible Russian territorial claims showed, the relationship between Yeltsin’s White House and Nazarbayev’s offices in Alma Ata is fraught with potential conflicts. As one American scholar puts it, Nazarbayev has not yet found a way “to juggle Russian and Kazakh interests. The simultaneous rise of Russian nationalism and Islamic nationalism creates a potentially volatile situation.”

KIRGHIZIA

Askar Akayev

Party Membership: Communist since 1981.

Quote: “Among countries with market economies, there are rich and poor states, but among the countries with a command economy, there is not one that is rich.”

This gentle-mannered expert in quantum optics is, with Lithuania’s Vytautas Landsbergis, perhaps the most improbable of republican leaders. Yet he stands as one of Gorbachev’s main hopes for keeping the rapidly disintegrating country together. Last week, it became known in Moscow that Gorbachev had offered Akayev the Soviet vice presidency.

The Russian-educated Akayev, 46, was the leader of Kirghizia’s “silken revolution” which earlier routed a hard-line party leader. He has not given up on the need for ties with the other republics even though Kirghizia last week joined the parade of republics proclaiming independence. He insists that work must continue on Gorbachev’s Union Treaty, and has agreed with the Soviet president on the need for a “single economic zone” of both loyalist and breakaway republics. Enlightened self-interest is probably a factor: Akayev’s rugged land of horsemen and shepherds is one of the poorest of the republics.

LATVIA

Anatolijs V. Gorbunovs

Party Membership: Former Communist Party official.

Quote: “We are fully in control of the situation in all parts of the republic.”

A party functionary for more than eight years before his election to the head of Latvia’s Parliament in 1988, Gorbunovs, 49, once denounced pro-independence demonstrators. But shortly after his re-election last year, the new nationalist-dominated Parliament declared “transitional independence.” It voted for a clean break during the anti-Gorbachev putsch.

Still, the unflappable Gorbunovs has been cautious in the quest for independence, saying, “We in Latvia cannot follow the Lithuanian road.” Demographics are one reason--non-Latvians, predominantly non-Russians, make up about half of the population. As Latvia tries to go its own way, Gorbunovs must take care not to offend the frequently combative Russian minority, and the leader that it will now look to for protection--Yeltsin.

LITHUANIA

Vytautas Landsbergis

Party Membership: The Lithuanian nationalist movement Sajudis.

Quote: “Lithuania has gained independence. Its diplomatic recognition by the United States will finally settle this issue.”

The first republic to announce that it was breaking ties with Moscow has been led through the drama by a former music professor who has said he is unhappy in the corridors of power unless there is a piano nearby. Landsbergis’ relations with Gorbachev are terrible, perhaps the worst of any republican leader.

He is pedantic, wordy, picayune at times. But Landsbergis, 58, whose grandfather and father also fought for the independence of Lithuania, has stuck single-mindedly to his goal. In March,1990, he became the first non-Communist elected to head a Soviet republic, and rammed through a declaration of independence. He never wavered even as the Kremlin cut off the republic’s vital oil supplies and Soviet soldiers and police went on rampages.

His challenge now is to work out a modus vivendi with whatever central authority evolves in Moscow, and with Washington, where President Bush’s cautious policy on Baltic independence has been a personal frustration.

MOLDOVA

Mircea Snegur

Party Membership: Former Communist Party official.

Quote: “Each second brings us closer and closer to the holy summit of freedom.”

Moldova’s interim president has come under fire this year for taking an increasingly autocratic line. In May, he had to go to the extraordinary lengths of issuing a statement denying that he has a dictatorial streak.

While denouncing “the center” and rejecting Gorbachev’s Union Treaty, Snegur, 51, has consistently advocated mutually profitable relations with the other Soviet republics. Yeltsin, he says, deserves praise because he seeks to “enlarge and deepen mutually profitable relations with the other sovereign republics.” Yet he has also described Moldova’s declaration of independence as an interim stage before reunification with neighboring Romania, from which most of the territory of present-day Moldova was torn during World War II.

He has been fiercely anti-Communist since last February, when he resigned as chairman of the legislature, claiming the party was out to smear him. He was later elected to the post of interim president until a direct election can be held.

RUSSIA

Boris N. Yeltsin

Party Membership: Joined Communist Party in 1961; quit in July, 1990.

Quote: “I am convinced once again that the idea of the Union is not exhausted.”

What does Yeltsin really want? Following his central role in defeating the anti-Gorbachev putsch--a role that has catapulted him toward the pinnacle of power--that question is now the major preoccupation in Soviet politics. Alarmed at the rapid breakup of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin, 60, is championing voluntary agreements between the republics to organize economic cooperation and ensure their defense. These emerging blueprints have already become the major item for discussion at this week’s Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow.

But Russia is so big, and Yeltsin such a strong and domineering personality, that already protests are heard that the onetime Moscow Communist Party boss is well on his way to becoming Russia’s newest czar. Can the other republics learn to live with the Russian bear? Dare they not?

TADZHIKISTAN

Presidency vacant

President Kakhar Makhkamov, a loyal party man before the failed anti-Gorbachev coup, resigned under pressure from the republic’s Supreme Soviet during the weekend following demonstrations by opposition movements such as Rostakhez (Islamic Renaissance). Makhkamov, 59, broke with the Soviet Communist Party after the coup in a bid to show some sort of autonomy--and also to shield the local leadership from any retaliatory measures taken against the national party. But he showed no enthusiasm for independence. Prime Minister Izatullo Khayeyev, 55, has become Tadzhikistan’s provisional leader pending new presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 27.

TURKMENISTAN

Saparmurad Niyazov

Party Membership: Communist since 1962.

Quote: “They (the national government) have been stealing from us for years . . . . It’s just pure theft.”

Niyazov, 51, has sparred often with the Kremlin, saying that leaders in Moscow should not have the right to levy taxes in Turkmenistan and complaining of the plundering of profits from the republic’s natural gas and cotton industries. He has pushed for higher gas prices and an overhaul of the taxation system.

But he is strongly criticized for his hard-line stance against political dissent. Turkmenistan is the only Soviet republic without a single legally sanctioned alternative political organization, for example. “What the putschists failed to achieve, Niyazov did long ago in our republic,” one critic said last week. Niyazov has explained that for a multi-party system to function, Turkmenistan would need a “new level of spirituality and of civilization” that regrettably is still a long way in the future.

UKRAINE

Leonid Kravchuk

Party Membership: Former Ukrainian Communist Party chief for ideology.

Quote: “No one will change our borders.”

A longtime party functionary, Kravchuk, 57, was elected to his government position in the summer of 1990 over protest by Ukrainian nationalist deputies, who boycotted the vote claiming that “party interests are being set above the interests of the people.”

Kravchuk pledged to pursue “sovereignty,” but waffled on the definition in such a way that he could please the Kremlin and the grass-roots pro-secession group Rukh at the same time. Subsequently, the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament)--which has a Communist majority--declared independence subject to a Dec. 1 referendum.

They say of Kravchuk that he is silver-tongued enough to “steal a chicken and still be friends with the farmer.” His relations with Yeltsin’s Russia will be decisive in the fate of the geopolitical mass that was the Soviet Union. The two agree on the need for cooperation to avert “disintegration,” but have already had one face-off on territorial disputes.

UZBEKISTAN

Islam Karimov

Party Membership: Communist since 1964.

Quote: “The leadership of Uzbekistan will never agree to a secondary role.”

The tremendous changes in recent weeks that have rocked the Soviet Union are exemplified by the 53-year-old Karimov, who cuts the pasha-like figure common to Central Asian Communist leaders. Once a big booster of Gorbachev’s Union Treaty, he last week orchestrated a parliamentary declaration of independence. Economics make the idea of secession seem like nonsense--handouts from Moscow paid about a third of the republican government’s operating expenses last year. Uzbekistan is one of the world’s largest cotton producers, but is wholly reliant on the rest of the Soviet Union for a broad list of other products. If independence is to be anything but a pose, Karimov must come up with a way for the republic to be more economically self-sufficient. Meanwhile, he is subtly playing the national card, just as he has courted Muslim favor by allowing mosques to reopen.

Moscow bureau researcher Steven Gutterman contributed to this story.