Word: baltics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most of the country is moving at a snail's pace in carrying out perestroika, the relatively more prosperous Baltic states have been pressing the Kremlin to go further with economic reforms. Moscow officials have opposed the idea of independent national currencies, but that has not stopped the three republics from drafting plans to reduce the flood of Soviets who come from the rest of the country to buy scarce goods in better-supplied Baltic shops. The Estonians discuss establishing their own credit-card system, and the Latvians talk about creating an alternative currency as early as next January...
...course, such a scenario would derail if the Baltic republics decided instead to uncouple totally from the Soviet train. Emotions are running particularly high this month because of the 50th anniversary of the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact, the treaty signed by the Foreign Ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that opened the way for Moscow's occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940. In downtown Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, a group of young hunger strikers has set up a makeshift shelter decorated with placards calling for liquidation of the Nazi-Soviet pact. HOW LONG WILL...
Valentin Falin, head of the Central Committee's international department, conceded last month what Moscow has long denied: that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a secret protocol that called for the Soviet takeover of the Baltics. But Baltic deputies serving on a commission to study the pact complain that Moscow representatives want to stop short of drawing the necessary conclusions about the legal standing of their republics in the union. Says Estonian Popular Front leader Rein Veidemann: "We must solve the Baltic question and recognize the fact that we were first occupied and then annexed." But what would belated recognition...
Still, the Baltic states hope at least to cut a better deal with Moscow, perhaps in a new treaty that guarantees their sovereign rights. During five decades of Soviet rule, the three republics have watched helplessly as all- powerful ministries in Moscow imposed new industries, regardless of whether they were appropriate to the region. As a result, stretches of white sand beaches along the Baltic coast became too polluted for swimming. An influx of outside manpower threatened to make Latvians a minority in their own homeland. The hardworking Estonians learned to their amazement that by Gorbachev's reckoning, they were...
...Baltic states also demand more say in military affairs. The Estonian government has petitioned Moscow to put more Estonians in the republic's interior-ministry forces and border guards. There have been calls to restore the tradition of local military units like the Sixteenth Lithuanian Rifle Division, and more radical proposals to create a zone of peace in the Baltics. Says Latvian Popular Front leader Dainis Ivans: "We should decide ourselves how many military bases we need on our territory and move step by step toward making Latvia a military-free zone...