Word: baltic
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...decades the Soviet people accepted the situation in silence. But glasnost has made them less afraid to speak out. Citizens worried about the environment are demonstrating by the thousands and contributing to political unrest in the Baltic States. Elsewhere, budding environmental groups have even sponsored candidates for city elections...
This ethnic clash has become Gorbachev's most explosive domestic issue because other restive Soviet republics, from Estonia on the Baltic to Georgia in the Caucasus, are watching how he deals with the fiercely nationalistic Armenians. The Armenians are likely to have taken note of the emotion in his voice at Kennedy Airport when he spoke of the urgency of helping victims of the earthquake. This tragedy thus gives Gorbachev an opportunity to present himself as a caring leader who seeks to heal rather than divide...
...response would be once the suggested legislation was presented for "public discussion" in October. More than 300,000 comments and suggestions flooded in; as a result, 58 out of 117 proposed clauses in the package of constitutional amendments and election laws were modified. Leading the legal revolt was the Baltic republic of Estonia, where the push for political reform has gone the furthest. Estonians feared that the new system would strengthen the authority of the central government and hamper efforts to achieve greater regional autonomy. In an unprecedented challenge to Moscow, the Estonian parliament rejected the constitutional amendments last month...
...Gorbachev apparently had second thoughts about carrying the campaign against the Estonians any further. In his 70-minute opening address, he dropped a prepared passage that would have heaped more criticism on the Baltic republic. Instead, he acknowledged that some provisions of the draft laws had been "formulated imprecisely" and proposed the establishment of a commission to "scrutinize point after point" the separation of powers between the federal government and the republics...
...change of signal came too late to prevent most of the session's 37 speakers from sniping at the Baltic state. While Estonian President Arnold Ruutel watched impassively from the dais, his republic was accused of "creating a hotbed of tensions." In his own presentation, Ruutel repeated demands that Estonians be allowed to decide what form of parliament they wanted. There should be no place in the new laws, said Ruutel, for "formalistic texts that do not take into account the specific differences and demands" of each region...