Word: baltic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fire-blackened walls of Tbilisi's Government House are a grim reminder of the street battle last December that toppled Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first popularly elected President. The fervently patriotic Georgians had been quick to follow the lead of the Baltic republics in breaking away from Moscow early in 1990, but the majority admit they were duped by the charismatic nationalist, whose dictatorial policies turned democratic forces against him. * Gamsakhurdia instituted no economic reforms and left the state bureaucracy in a shambles. His worst legacy, though, was to set his compatriots on a collision course with ethnic minorities who felt...
...Ethnic cleansing," it appears, plagues not just the Balkans but the Baltic as well. In a hail of rocks and Molotov cocktails, skinheads and neo-Nazis in the eastern German port of Rostock tried to storm an apartment block housing 200 asylum-seeking Romanian Gypsies, beginning an ugly battle that would last all week. After officials moved the Gypsies, the hooligans trapped 100 Vietnamese guest workers in a neighboring building and set it ablaze. By luck alone, none of the inhabitants was seriously hurt...
...Worse, Russian-controlled units of the former Soviet army have been caught up in the battle. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has warned that Moscow may intervene to protect its soldiers and ethnics. That could set a precedent for further interventions on behalf of 25 million Russians living in the Baltic states, the Central Asian republics and other parts of the old Soviet Union, as some of Yeltsin's nationalist opponents are already demanding. At week's end an international conference in Istanbul arranged a cease-fire, but there is serious doubt it will hold...
...importance of spying in terms of Russia's security. Moscow's interest in fomenting coups in the Third World may have dwindled, but threats from potential adversaries in now independent republics, each with its own budding intelligence service, are a growing concern. Fears of foreign spies infiltrating through the Baltic and Central Asian states have led Boris Yeltsin to call for strengthening border surveillance...
...Soviet Empire. Gorbachev describes this period with remarkable understatement as "particularly difficult." He will only admit that he should have "seized the moment" and invited democratic groups to join him in "some sort of round-table meetings." He also sheds no light on the January 1991 crackdown in the Baltic republics, which seriously tarnished his image abroad as a reformer. He notes in the vaguest terms that there was "an escalation in confrontation," and that "the threat of dictatorship was real...