The Soviet Union's top legislative official told a group of American scholars Friday that the Kremlin is prepared to use force, if necessary, to quell mounting ethnic unrest in Soviet provinces.
In a wide-ranging conversation at the prestigious Brookings Institution, the visiting official, Yevgeniy M. Primakov, noted that "grudges have arisen between the central authority in Moscow and provincial authorities" in many of the Soviet Union's 20 republics.In some cases, he added, the problems have been compounded because "national groups have become a minority" in their own areas.
A solution to the "extremist feelings" now evident in the Baltics and elsewhere within the country is "under intense discussion" among government and party leaders, Primakov said. The remedy, he predicted, will entail "true independence within the framework of a federated state."
Primakov holds the title of chairman of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet, the upper chamber of the recently reconstituted Soviet parliament. In legislative terms that makes him the rough equivalent of Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) and Sen. Robert Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the minority leader. The parliament he heads is the first chosen in competitive elections in 70 years under rules sponsored by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Last month, in a bid to muster support for his beleaguered reform program, Gorbachev elevated Primakov to the ruling Politburo as a non-voting member.
Primakov told the scholars that nationalist strife has "thrown back the pace of perestroika," the five-year-old Soviet effort to institute deep-seated economic reforms.
"We want to avoid the use of force," Primakov said. "But we would use it" should Moslem-based Azerbaijan seek to blockade their neighboring foes in predominantly Christian Armenia. The two republics have been sparring over the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, a chiefly Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. That ongoing conflict has claimed an untold number of lives.
Primakov, however, ruled out any steps to alter current internal Soviet borders. Such a step would "plunge our country into chaos."
Echoing a recent speech to the Supreme Soviet by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Primakov also told the scholars that new war powers legislation is being drafted that would severely curb Gorbachev's power to deploy Soviet forces in armed conflicts.
At another point in the discussion, he candidly admitted that the Supreme Soviet had long been a rubber-stamp group that did the bidding of the ruling Politburo. But he asserted the lawmakers had now become active power brokers and were deeply involved in such critical decisions as the recent move to dismantle an anti-ballistic-missile radar station in Siberia.