The bullies of Vilnius

MIGHT does not make right, not even in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The man fêted last year as the Liberator of Warsaw, Berlin and Prague has already shown enough of a brutal streak in Lithuania to be dubbed instead the Bully of Vilnius. Mr Gorbachev draws a distinction between the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and the Soviet empire at home. Some differences there are, but the central point is identical: Lithuanians have as much right peaceably to decide their own future as Poles and Germans do. If Mr Gorbachev is willing to acknowledge this, he will find a way to back his armoured cars out of the Lithuanian dead-end they have gone into this week. But if his real intention is not to release the captive parts of the Soviet empire on any reasonable terms, he will use the power—and the firepower—at his disposal to break Lithuania. That is when the West will have to show that it no longer finds Mr Gorbachev a man it can do business with.