Word: gorbachev
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...stronger than you, said Mikhail Gorbachev. Therefore you will do what I say. You can, if you insist, pursue your secessionist ambitions, but only according to rules and a timetable that suit those of us who don't want to see you ever achieve your goal. Otherwise I will use force...
Presidential spokesman Vitali Ignatenko scoffed at rumors that the security establishment was ruling his boss. His denial seemed borne out by Gorbachev's ultimatum to Lithuania on Thursday. What he called the public "demand" for Moscow to take over in the Baltics actually referred to ethnic Russian demonstrations in Vilnius and Riga orchestrated by Interfront, the anti- independence league of non-Baltic workers in the breakaway republics. Massed outside the parliament building in Vilnius on Tuesday, a wave of these workers broke down the front door before local national guardsmen pushed back the assault with fire hoses. The next...
...similar facedown was shaping up in Georgia. The ferociously independent Caucasus republic was ordered by Gorbachev to withdraw its police from the autonomous enclave of South Ossetia. While asserting their own right to go it alone, Georgians have clamped down vigorously on Ossetians venturing to break away from Georgia. Lawmakers in Tbilisi called Gorbachev's fiat "interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign republic...
Amid the swirl of gunshots and shouting, Gorbachev did manage to conciliate one important rival: Russian republic leader Boris Yeltsin, who agreed to increase his state's contribution to the central treasury from a tightfisted 23.4 billion rubles ($13 billion) to 80 billion rubles ($45 billion), though still short of its previous 60% share. In return, Yeltsin won concessions on budgetary accounting and greater control over the sprawling republic's enormous coal, natural gas and oil reserves. But Yeltsin withheld any endorsement of the troop deployments, arguing that "violence begets violence...
That view was reflected even more strongly in an Izvestia article by Georgi Arbatov, the noted Americanologist and former Gorbachev adviser. He warned that opponents of perestroika "have tried to exploit natural discontent and worry to turn the clock back. They are trying to blackmail our parliament, politicians and even the President." If so, the principal blackmail victim was proving no mean shakedown artist himself...