Word: estonians
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Valjas has astutely chosen compromise rather than confrontation with the powerful Estonian Popular Front. He has even turned over the key state- planning portfolio to economist Edgar Savisaar, a member of the movement's executive council. During elections last March, the Popular Front did not run its own candidates against party regulars. Valjas garnered 90% of the votes in his district, but a poll for a Finnish newspaper taken just after the balloting showed that if true multiparty elections had been held, the Communists would have placed a distant second to the Estonian Popular Front...
...same questionnaire revealed that when ethnic Estonians were asked about the future of the republic, 55% opted for complete independence. A coalition of small nationalist groups has launched a campaign to register those who < lived in Estonia during its years of independence (1918 to 1940) and their descendants in order to convene an Estonian National Congress to discuss the fate of the nation. Organizers deny that they are creating a rival parliamentary body, but the fact that some 100,000 people have responded has caused concern within the ranks of the party and the Popular Front, and deepened the mistrust...
...Estonian leadership has come under virulent attack from militant Russians for promoting legislation that gives priority to the language and culture of ethnic Estonians. Gorbachev may have taken a conciliatory approach with the nation's striking miners, but the authorities in Tallinn signaled last week that they were growing impatient with Russian agitators who have been using labor protests to press their demands. The authorities invoked a resolution recently passed by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to ban the strike and issued a call for "common sense." As Popular Front leader Veidemann notes, "Our greatest danger lies in creating...
...population in their homeland. By 1979 their numbers had dwindled to 53.7%. During the same period, the total of ethnic Russians in Latvia climbed from 11% to 32.8%. Thus, Latvian national aims have to be advanced through the art of compromise. At a time when Lithuanian and Estonian parliamentarians were debating whether to turn down Moscow's election-reform laws last November, the Latvians, led by President Anatoli Gorbunov, veered away from open revolt and drafted alternative wordings for the disputed passages...
...political benefits of such a strategy are obvious. "We cannot make Russia go away, and we are not about to leave Estonia," says Estonian Popular Front leader Veidemann. "So we must find a clever way to coexist and create conditions that would make the Soviet Union interested in our independence...