Word: atas
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...startling bulletin was issued from the headquarters of TASS, the official Soviet news agency, just before Christmas last year: students had rioted in Alma-Ata, the capital of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, during the previous day and night. Cars and a food store were burned, TASS said, and townspeople had been "insulted." Never before had the Soviets, who blamed the protests on "nationalist elements," reported such violence so frankly and promptly. The revelation was seen as another sign of Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign for glasnost, or openness. Still, Western journalists have long been barred from Alma-Ata -- until last...
...deposed and disgraced at a Dec. 16 plenum of the party Central Committee. His removal and the decision to replace him with an ethnic Russian from outside Kazakhstan, Gennadi Kolbin, party leader from Ulyanovsk province, set off the demonstrations the following day. According to officials in Alma-Ata, the demonstrators were angered not so much by Kunaev's dismissal as by the decision to replace him with an outsider, Russian or not. But the motives may have run deeper than that. Prime Minister Nursultan Nazarbaev, a Kazakh who rose to the premiership when Kunaev was in power, said that some...
There was more death and damage in Alma-Ata than was at first reported in the Soviet media. According to Nazarbaev and Interior Minister Grigory Knyazev, up to 3,000 youths participated in the demonstrations, significantly more than the "several hundred" reported in the Soviet press. They also said that two people were killed, a student and an auxiliary policeman, not one, as previously stated. Both died from head injuries, but the officials did not specify whether the injuries were caused by rioters' stones or policemen's clubs. An additional 200 were injured, Nazarbaev said, and 100 were "detained...
...style. Ever since he took power in March 1985, the Soviet leader has encouraged frankness in public attitudes toward domestic Soviet problems by mounting a campaign of glasnost, or openness. Last week, for example, foreign diplomats were taken aback by the unprecedented Soviet coverage of ethnic rioting in Alma-Ata, capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Despite such newfound candor, however, Gorbachev has been unable to shake the opprobrium created in the West by human-rights violations in general and the Sakharov case in particular...
...think the postal service has everissued a stamp honoring someone about whom solittle is known," joked President Derek C. Bok ata press conference at the Kennedy School'sInstitute of Politics Forum yesterday...