Word: baltic
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Shaking their fists defiantly, protesters last week massed at the government house in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian republic, chanting, "Lithuania! Lithuania! Lithuania!" For this fiercely independent nation of 5.4 million in the Caucasus, the troubles in the Baltics far to the north seemed alarmingly near. Georgians had already felt the Kremlin's determination to keep the union intact, when Soviet paratroopers armed with sharpened spades brutally dispersed a nationalist demonstration in April 1989, killing 20 people. Just as the Baltic states showed support in that hour of crisis, Georgians embraced the tragedy in Vilnius last week...
...stupid or soft." But would he actually have done it if the West had not been divided and distracted by the Suez events? Or to put it another way, what did Mikhail Gorbachev last week consider to be the lessons of 1956, and how do they apply to the Baltic states' demands for independence...
...fashioned iron fist remained poised last week over all three Baltic republics, which have asserted their independence from the U.S.S.R. Army paratroops in Vilnius openly threatened the Lithuanian government. Predicted President Vytautas Landsbergis, who was holed up in the barricaded parliament building awaiting the next move: "The legitimate powers in Lithuania and Latvia will be overthrown...
...beret units from the Interior Ministry mounted a similar show of force two weeks ago, causing fear that presidential rule would soon follow. "This invasion," declared the parliament in Riga, "is only a pretext for starting a large-scale attack on the democratic institutions of Latvia." A contingent of Baltic lawmakers gathered for a regional conference in Finland went even further. Echoing the warning of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze when he abruptly resigned in protest last month, they charged that Moscow's display of the iron fist signaled "the restoration of the power of dictatorship in the U.S.S.R...
Presidential spokesman Vitali Ignatenko scoffed at rumors that the security establishment was ruling his boss. His denial seemed borne out by Gorbachev's ultimatum to Lithuania on Thursday. What he called the public "demand" for Moscow to take over in the Baltics actually referred to ethnic Russian demonstrations in Vilnius and Riga orchestrated by Interfront, the anti- independence league of non-Baltic workers in the breakaway republics. Massed outside the parliament building in Vilnius on Tuesday, a wave of these workers broke down the front door before local national guardsmen pushed back the assault with fire hoses. The next...