Word: finnish
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...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...
...SWAPO incursions allowed South Africa, which agreed to the independence plan only grudgingly, a rare opportunity to cry foul. Calling the violations a "grave situation," Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha warned that the Namibian peace process "could collapse within hours." Pretoria applied pressure on UNTAG's Finnish commander, Martti Ahtisaari, to reactivate some South African military forces and ordered others back to service on its own. Backed by Western public opinion for once, South Africa continued to threaten an end to the treaty. Declared Foreign Minister Botha: "SWAPO must surrender, lay down their arms, hoist a white flag...
...jotted down these facts in our notebooks, and many more: the founding of a local branch of the anti-Stalinist movement, Memorial, the first reported case of aids in Tambov, the first Soviet-Finnish joint construction project, rumors that racketeers were moving in on local cooperatives. Late-night television had even come to Tambov, something we Muscovites still lacked. Then there were those telling words from a worker on the regional party committee: "We decided to do away with special food packages for ourselves so that there would not be talk about us having privileges that other workers...
...lived here the way they used to. Stalin began the practice of giving privileges to the leadership: special foods, dachas fenced off from those belonging to ordinary mortals, apartments in the best-built houses. Brezhnev expanded these privileges. How many hunting and fishing "lodges" were built and furnished with Finnish furniture and rugs so thick you could tumble into them up to your waist! This inequality in a society declaring equality caused great indignation...
...there was another warning, this one from the FAA. The reason: four days earlier, the U.S. embassy in Helsinki had received an anonymous phone call from a person with a Middle Eastern accent. The tipster stated that a man named Abdullah planned to pass a device to a female Finnish passenger, who would unwittingly transport it to Frankfurt, then onto a U.S.-bound craft. U.S. and Finnish authorities dismissed the message because the caller was a known hoaxer...