Soviet Union The Cracks Within

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The unbreakable union of free republics, joined together forever by great Russia . . ." At 6 a.m. each day, the opening lines of the Soviet state anthem ring out in Russian from radios across the vast country. They are heard by reindeer-herding Chukchi tribesmen in Siberia, Buryat farmers near the Mongolian border and Estonian fishermen by the Baltic Sea. The words project an illusion of homogeneity that Moscow finds increasingly difficult to maintain.

As Mikhail Gorbachev has learned since coming to power in 1985, the "unbreakable union" has a few cracks. The 285 million Soviet people form a patchwork of at least 100 ethnic groups in 15 national republics, 20 autonomous republics, eight autonomous regions and ten autonomous areas. Only about 140 million are ethnic Russians -- and a growing number of the remainder are restless.

In December 1986, Kazakh youths rampaged through Alma Ata to protest the appointment of an ethnic Russian as party first secretary of Kazakhstan. In July 1987, Crimean Tatars demanded the right to return to their homeland on the Black Sea, from which they were removed in 1944. Last February, Armenians and Azerbaijanis began to clash over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave south of the Caucasus. And last week in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, the local supreme soviet turned down constitutional amendments proposed by Moscow and voiced new demands for sovereignty. Two days later, the Lithuanian supreme soviet raised similar objections, but stopped short of constitutional rebellion. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to protest the compromise vote.

The Russian-dominated leadership in Moscow can find small comfort in the fact that the Estonian itch for independence has not spread considerably farther -- yet. Under Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet nationality policy seemed to mean that national groups could organize the likes of folkloric song and dance companies, but that the major decisions affecting the welfare of national groups were made in Moscow. Bureaucratic centralization reached such absurd dimensions that, as a Lithuanian once complained, "Ivan Petrovich must rule on the opening times for toilets in towns with names he cannot even pronounce."

Two weeks ago, the party's Central Committee announced a mid-1989 plenum to discuss the sensitive ethnic issue; the outcome may help shape a policy that goes beyond current disjointed prescriptions. In examining the Soviet Union's ethnic dilemma, TIME offers a report on the two republics that present Gorbachev with his greatest challenge: Estonia and Armenia.

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CAPTION: SOVIET MOSAIC