Word: baltic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Malaise and exhaustion have settled over much of the Baltics. Prices are prohibitive, economic reform is achingly slow and political development has stalled. "Life hasn't suddenly become bright and easy," says Kaupo Pollisinski, spokesman for the Bank of Estonia. The struggle for independence has left many Balts politically apathetic. "For two years I went to every demonstration," says Lauri Sillak, a 23-year-old Estonian artist. "I like independence, but I'm tired of politics now." The republics expected a disproportionate amount of attention from the West, but that has waned, and some Baltic leaders are worried that Europe...
...protracted debate over local Russians has distracted Baltic leaders' attention from other issues. A majority of the 1.8 million ethnic Russians are faced with the prospect of becoming unwelcome foreigners. In Lithuania, where the alien population of 20% poses little threat, all inhabitants received instant citizenship. But in Estonia and Latvia, where non-natives make up 40% and 50% of the population respectively, the citizenship issue is highly charged...
...Baltic governments manage to reform their economies without incurring dire levels of poverty and unemployment, the citizenship conflict may wane. Estonia, aided by its close cultural ties to Finland, has moved the most swiftly, issuing its own hard currency, the kroon, backed by gold reserves. That has complicated exchanges with Russia but helped increase foreign investment and trade...
Despite their small size, the Baltic nations have loomed large as bellwethers in both the Soviet and the post-Soviet eras. Now the world looks to them for clues about the potential for reform in all the other former Soviet republics...
What the world sees is not always reassuring. The Lithuanian elections serve as a warning that there is a limit to the burdens people will endure for the sake of political and economic reform. But even though hardship and turmoil have plagued their first 12 months of freedom, the Baltic states sacrificed too much in the struggle for independence to forfeit their dreams of a better life. Few Balts, after all, would trade their nation's future -- however uncertain -- for its past...