Word: baltic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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About half the U.S.S.R.'s 286 million people are Russian; the rest of the population is splintered among nearly 100 other ethnic groups. The non- Russians best known in the West are the Baltic peoples -- Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians -- who are noisily resisting Moscow's domination. The three independent republics were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. For 50 years the U.S. has said Soviet rule in the Baltic republics is illegitimate...
...active decisions he did make were not in the cause of democracy. He warned the communist parties in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia not to declare their independence from Mother Russia. Given a chance to make substantive reforms in his own empire, he is loath...
Haunted by nightmares of blood in Tiananmen Square, Rumania and even Tbilisi last April, when Soviet troops massacred 19 protesters, Moscow is reluctant to use force to maintain control in the republics. It is also possible to contemplate the three Baltic states seceding without the entire union unraveling. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are relatively recent additions to the union. Furthermore, unlike many of the other republics, the Baltics were independent at the time of their incorporation. There is, therefore, a historical basis for treating them as a special case. Perhaps the Kremlin aims to do just that. Last week Soviet...
...Baltic republics, secessionist passion is inversely proportional to the percentage of ethnic Russians living there. Lithuania has the smallest Russian population; hence Gorbachev received the region's most emotional dose of separatism. Nonetheless, there was something exhilarating about seeing the leader of the Soviet Union debating citizens in the streets. Thomas Jefferson could not have asked for a better illustration of democracy in action, though Gorbachev may have wished for an experience a shade less vivid...
Like the other two Baltic republics, Lithuania has already been given control of its own economy. Its demands for political independence, however, mean different things to different demanders. If the Baltic state were ever to declare its complete independence from the U.S.S.R., that freedom would carry a price...