Progress Round The Clock

In the Estonian capital of Tallinn last week, more than 3,000 ethnic activists tested the outer limits of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost. A congress of the nationalist organization, Estonia’s Popular Front in Support of Perestroika, called for more regional autonomy, political democratization, economic freedom, a new currency and adoption of Estonian as the sole national language. But in its push for political changes, the Front stopped short of demands for secession.

Estonia’s Communist Party boss Vayno Vyalyas gamely sat in on the congress, evidently considering it riskier to suppress the movement than to try co- opting it, especially since one-fifth of the 60,000 who elected the delegates are Communists. Declared Vyalyas: “This is an example of socialist pluralism.” And how. Estonia has already announced that its clocks will no longer be forceably aligned with Moscow’s, but will line up with neutral Finland, one hour farther west.