Word: crackdowns
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...could see how Gorbachev was transforming their continent. Meanwhile, East European reformers argued to Bush that the success of their own programs depended on the continuation of perestroika, and Eduard Shevardnadze convinced Baker that perestroika depended on Gorbachev's ability to control the change without resorting to a violent crackdown...
...darkest hour of his leadership. Not only had he lost one of his closest allies in the Kremlin, but it seemed obvious that he could no longer continue walking a tightrope over the heads of reformist democrats, national separatists and proponents of a law-and-order crackdown; the splits had become too deep and envenomed for that. And Shevardnadze tossed in a warning of what might happen if Gorbachev finally came down on the side of the authoritarians. "No one knows what this dictatorship will be like," he said, "what kind of dictator will come to power and what order...
...Soviet army garrison in the 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...
While the left was splintering, the right was organizing to demand a law- and-order crackdown. Some 470 members of the Congress of People's Deputies, or just over a fifth of the total, belong to Soyuz (Union), a diverse grouping of military men, members of the powerful military-industrial complex and ethnic Russians living as minorities in various republics. As the Congress of People's Deputies meeting approached, Soyuz and conservatives generally seemed to be gaining influence with a frustrated Gorbachev. That should have been no surprise. The reformists' strength had always resided in an evanescent popular mood that...
During the fall, Moscow was awash with rumors that the rightists had talked Gorbachev into a crackdown. German Sovietologist Nerlich, who was in Moscow in November, heard a particularly unnerving -- and unconfirmed -- story. During a Politburo meeting on Nov. 16, an army-KGB-conservative bloc supposedly presented Gorbachev with an ultimatum that Nerlich summarizes this way: "Within six weeks he had to get things under control in the republics, Moscow and Leningrad or there would be physical ways of removing him." Janis Jurkans, foreign minister of the Latvian republic, tells a different story of a November ultimatum. He said last...