Word: gorbachevized
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Thus it is possible that the Baltic leaders racing so anxiously to independence are hurrying unnecessarily. Gorbachev could have entirely different crackdowns in mind as he gathers in his new powers to declare emergencies and maintains them "to defend the interests and security of the U.S.S.R." It is the decay of the center rather than the demands of the periphery that is most threatening to his reforms. His biggest immediate problem is likely to be the millions of Soviet citizens who are sick of communism, angry at the government, in despair at their living conditions -- and have no plans...
...republic after republic is shaken by unrest, often with religious overtones. After Soviet troops were called in last January to quell bloody rioting in Azerbaijan, Igor Belyaev, a prominent Soviet commentator on Muslim affairs, warned that "Iran has threatened the Soviet Union with an Islamic conflagration." President Mikhail Gorbachev argued that "Islamic fundamentalism" was a major factor in the rioting against minority Armenians in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku...
...Neither Gorbachev nor Belyaev is exactly on target in Azerbaijan. Fundamentalist Islam had very little to do with the rapid growth of the republic's Popular Front before the crushing intervention of the Soviet army in mid-January; the main issues were autonomy from Moscow and an end to the Communist Party monopoly of power. But elsewhere, profound Islamic forces -- some of them violent -- have begun to shake up the status quo in response to Gorbachev's decision to allow freedom of conscience throughout the Soviet Empire. Examples...
...five Central Asian republics, Muslim officials are emboldened enough to show a certain coolness toward Gorbachev, who was not always so favorably disposed to freedom of religion. Less than four years ago, the Soviet leader described Islam as the "enemy of progress and socialism." Allahshukur Pasha- zada, head of the Baku-based Muslim Religious Board for Transcaucasia, still resents the Soviet President's claim that Islamic fundamentalism played a role in Azerbaijan's upheaval. He led the Muslim ceremony in honor of the dead when 1.5 million people gathered at the Cemetery of the Martyrs above Baku to mourn...
...vast majority of Soviet Muslims, who may be nationalistic but do not embrace any brand of vengeful fundamentalism. As Ilios Ibragimov, a Tadzhik truck driver in Dushanbe, put it, "Those people who caused the damage and looted, they were fools, bad people." The question is whether Mikhail Gorbachev will also recognize the distinction and avoid further polarization of the restive Muslims along volatile religious lines...