Word: baltics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...autonomous republic of Tatarstan, 500 miles east of Moscow and larger than all three secessionist Baltic republics, is one of more than 30 ethnic enclaves within the federation. The region, where the predominantly Muslim Tatars make up only 48% of the population, is rich in oil and home to major industries, including Kamaz, the world's largest heavy-duty truck manufacturer. In his 1990 presidential campaign, Yeltsin challenged Tatarstan to "take as much sovereignty as you can swallow." But surely he did not expect his listeners to take such a decisive bite...
...comparisons to Hitler. As chairman of the deceptively named Liberal-Democratic Party, Zhirinovsky campaigned on a platform mixing promises of cheaper vodka with blatant xenophobia to place a surprising third in the Russian presidential election won by Yeltsin last June. He has threatened to poison the newly independent Baltic peoples with nuclear waste and vows to expand Russian territory by force. Though his fanaticism has made him mainly a vulgar curiosity, some observers fear he may be a forerunner of politicians to come. Says Lev Timofeyev, a market-oriented economist: "A person with a program like Zhirinovsky's could...
...place of the Soviet Union, there are 15 separate nations and something called the Commonwealth of Independent States, which provides a tenuous framework for cooperation among 11 of them. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already reclaimed their status as separate competitors. Seven other former republics are not competing. But five states -- Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan -- will participate jointly at the Winter Games. Members of the so-called Unified Team wear the traditional red-white-and-light-gray uniforms of the former Soviet Union, but will be allowed to display the name, flag or symbol...
...city's scarcities became serious six months ago, say city officials, after the neighboring, newly independent Baltic states had already lifted their own price controls. That had led to an influx of entrepreneurial food buyers from those republics who took advantage of the cheaper prices to buy up Russian goods. At the same time, food supplies to the city from collective farms diminished after Mayor Anatoli Sobchak swept to power in elections in 1990. The bureaucracy, still predominantly hard-line communists, dragged their feet on implementing changes. While other Russian cities, including Moscow, could barter their industrial products for farm...
Gorbachev also talked repeatedly about granting "sovereignty" to the union's republics, yet he never devised a form of qualified freedom that had any appeal for the nationalist forces rising in all of the republics. When the three Baltic states insisted on regaining their separate status, he was even willing to look the other way last January as security forces used tanks and guns to suppress the independence movements...