Word: baltics
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Elsewhere, the outlook was far from hopeful. General Mikhail Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, pledged last week that "not a single additional soldier" would be sent to the breakaway Baltic states, but that did not stop tensions from mounting in the region. Interior Ministry special forces seized Latvia's largest printing plant and brought publication of major newspapers in the republic to a virtual halt. Moscow officials said the raid in Riga was to recover Communist Party property, which was allegedly seized illegally by the republican government. In neighboring Lithuania, Interior Ministry troops took control of party headquarters...
...fellow colonel named Nikolai Petrushenko; Shevardnadze contemptuously described the pair last week as "boys . . . with colonels' shoulder stripes" (both are in their 40s; Shevardnadze is 62). They have talked wildly of such things as an alleged CIA plot to unite national-front movements from the Black to the Baltic Seas into a single anti-Soviet confederation. Soyuz claimed credit for Gorbachev's sacking of the country's liberal Interior Minister last month, and brazenly announced that the Foreign Minister was next on its hit list...
...Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, a hotbed of tension between ethnic Russians and Lithuanians, sent soldiers toting submachine guns to patrol city streets and gave them authority to check documents and arrest civilians. This escalation gave weight to rumors that Moscow planned a military crackdown on the rebellious Baltic republics and prompted a protest from the Lithuanian government to Gorbachev that the actions of the Soviet army brutally violate the human rights of ((Lithuanian)) citizens...
Gorbachev, frustrated over the refusal of many republics to accept his draft of a new treaty of union, asserted that he would submit it to a popular referendum within each republic; the Baltic republics promptly declared that they would not let such a referendum be held on their turf. Most ominous, Gorbachev announced that he might introduce a "state of emergency or presidential rule" in areas where the "situation becomes especially tense and there is a serious threat to the state and to people's well-being." That might have been the trigger for Shevardnadze's resignation...
...Informal organizations at the grass roots and the emerging institutions of parliament, independent courts and a free press will eventually lead to a multiparty system. "I cannot imagine a new Stalinist dictatorship," Smith says. He can imagine, with equanimity, a Soviet Union that reorganizes itself after spinning off the Baltic states, Georgia, Moldavia and other bits...