Word: baltic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fellow colonel named Nikolai Petrushenko; Shevardnadze contemptuously described the pair last week as "boys . . . with colonels' shoulder stripes" (both are in their 40s; Shevardnadze is 62). They have talked wildly of such things as an alleged CIA plot to unite national-front movements from the Black to the Baltic Seas into a single anti-Soviet confederation. Soyuz claimed credit for Gorbachev's sacking of the country's liberal Interior Minister last month, and brazenly announced that the Foreign Minister was next on its hit list...
Beyond the specific complaints against Gorbachev, there is a deeper grievance. Because of both the position and the convictions he holds, he is identified with the very idea of a Soviet Union that stretches from Tallinn on the Baltic to Vladivostok on the Pacific. That idea is finished. The U.S.S.R. was kept together by force; it now has the freedom to come apart...
...Informal organizations at the grass roots and the emerging institutions of parliament, independent courts and a free press will eventually lead to a multiparty system. "I cannot imagine a new Stalinist dictatorship," Smith says. He can imagine, with equanimity, a Soviet Union that reorganizes itself after spinning off the Baltic states, Georgia, Moldavia and other bits...
...year later, as elected governments from the Baltic to the Black Sea struggle with the complexities of democracy and the harsh realities of the marketplace, often hampered by old demons like nationalism and populism, an awareness is growing that the full dues have yet to be paid. Whatever the sacrifices made over the past 12 months -- or the preceding four decades of communist rule -- citizens in every liberated East European nation are acknowledging that those were merely small down payments on freedom...
...major question: since the 1922 constitution setting up the Soviet Union * would be dissolved, would republics be able to secede merely by refusing to sign the new treaty? Grigori Revenko, a member of Gorbachev's current Presidential Council, has suggested that the rebellious Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, at least, would not be allowed to go as easily as that; they would still have to negotiate with Moscow over property issues. And they might not be the only ones. Akaky Asatiani, a leader of the Georgian parliament, said flatly last week that Georgia "will not sign the federal...