Word: baltics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sitting in his spacious, wood-paneled office in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Communist Party leader Vaino Valjas, 58, wryly sums up the situation in his tiny Baltic republic with a peasant proverb: Better to see once than to hear a hundred times. The former Soviet Ambassador to Nicaragua was called home only a year ago to take up his new post, but what Valjas has already witnessed in those tumultuous twelve months is nothing less than a revolution, from the birth of unofficial political movements like the Estonian Popular Front to the bruising constitutional crisis with Moscow over...
Valjas represents the new breed of Communist reformers who are taking power in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. He and his colleagues know that the party's prospects in the three Baltic states hinge on how quickly it can come to terms with growing popular demands for more radical political and economic change -- even if the party runs the risk of angering Moscow. So far, the Baltic challenge has not erupted in ethnic violence and social anarchy; instead, it has been subtly expressed in arcane legal debate and parliamentary procedure. For President Mikhail Gorbachev, it represents both...
...measure of how quickly political change has been sweeping through the Baltic republics that the debate about national self-determination has moved from the streets into Communist Party headquarters. Asked about the future, Valjas replies, "Our ideal is an independent, sovereign Estonia within the Soviet Union or within a federation of sovereign republics." Latvian Ideology Secretary Ivars Kezbers muses about being a "free republic in a free Soviet Union." Lithuanian Second Secretary Vladimir Berezov says that "our common goal is independence, even if the ways of getting there are different...
...paradox is that Gorbachev's campaign for economic reforms and political liberalization has drawn a more enthusiastic response from the three Baltic republics than from almost anywhere else in the country. The emergence of independent splinter groups like the Lithuanian Party of Democrats, the Estonian Christian Union and the Latvian National Independence Movement has already created something approximating a multiparty system in the Baltics. The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian delegations to the new Congress of the People's Deputies have proved to be the star pupils of the Gorbachev School of Democracy. The Estonians noted how one young Central Asian...
...yesterday, however, Baltic activists were no longer excited by the possibility...