Sounding Off in Moscow

Until lately any group of Soviet citizens daring to launch a protest demonstration in the shadow of the Kremlin would have been quickly bundled away to near-certain punishment for anti-Soviet activities. The fact that several hundred Crimean Tatars, a Soviet ethnic minority, were allowed to stage a lengthy Red Square sit-in, and then to state their grievances personally to President Andrei A. Gromyko, is an encouraging departure from the norm. It’s far from clear, however, that a relaxed attitude toward unauthorized demonstrations is going to be a permanent feature of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost , or greater openness

The Crimean Tatars, like the Soviet Union’s 5 million other Tatars, are descended from Turkic and Mongolian peoples. They were granted their own autonomous republic on the shores of the Black Sea in 1921. During World War II, however, dictator Josef Stalin forcibly deported 200,000 to 250,000 Crimean Tatars to other areas of the Soviet Union for alleged collaboration with the German invaders. More than 100,000 are said to have died in the process.

The Crimean Tatars’ constitutional rights were restored in 1967, but they have never been allowed to return to their homeland, which is now inhabited by Russians and Ukrainians. Members of the displaced minority, who waved banners reading “Homeland or Death” at the Red Square demonstration, are demanding that the historical injustice be corrected.

This poses a ticklish problem. The Kremlin is acutely aware that most of the Crimean Tatars are Sunni Muslims, and is decidedly not anxious to antagonize the Soviet Union’s millions of Central Asians of Muslim background. But, if the government gives in, other ethnic groups may be encouraged to launch public protests of their own.

The Kremlin is visibly anxious to smooth things over, as evidenced by the kid-glove treatment of the demonstrators, the audience with Gromyko and the recent appointment of a high-level commission to study the Crimean Tatars’ demands. However, the Tatars have made it plain that they won’t be put off easily.

Following their meeting with Gromyko, who dourly warned them against “trying to put pressure on bodies of state power,” the Crimean Tatar delegation dropped tentative plans for a hunger strike but announced that it was appealing to world leaders to “support the cause of our people.”

Despite the lack of immediate results, the mere fact that the Kremlin reacted so benignly to the demonstration in Red Square is a potentially significant milestone. In the Soviet Union, even more than in other places, progress comes one step at a time.

It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that the kid-glove treatment of the Crimean Tatar demonstrators in this case--and the earlier tolerance of protest marches in Leningrad and Riga, the capital of Latvia--contrasts sharply with the beating of Soviet Jews who staged a peaceful protest in Moscow a few weeks ago. In other words, there is still no inherent right of protest in the Soviet Union. As long as the Kremlin decides what is tolerable and what isn’t, freedom of speech and assembly has still not come to the Soviet Union.