Word: gorbachevized
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...same time that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is facing separatist challenges in several of his country's 15 republics, Eastern Europe is discovering that the ancient animosities suppressed for more than four decades by Moscow's harsh imperialism are rising again. These ethnic and nationalistic quarrels are the products of decades of wars, treaties and cynical deals between dictators that moved the borders of countries but often left their people behind. At the end of the 20th century, national minorities are everywhere. By some estimates, several hundred thousand ethnic Germans are still in Poland and 200,000 in Rumania. More...
...Saturday evening a grim-faced President Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on nationwide TV to defend the crackdown. Noting that two years of negotiations to resolve the conflict between the Azerbaijanis and Armenians had failed, he said flatly, "This had to stop." Yet many Soviets wondered why Gorbachev let the ethnic violence spin out of control last week before sending in troops. At the same time, there was an uneasy feeling that the country's army might find itself bogged down in another Afghanistan, within its own borders, fighting a people just as ferociously dedicated to defeating Moscow. Those fears were illustrated...
Through it all, Gorbachev gamely struggled to maintain an appearance of normality. Just back from his vexing three-day visit to Lithuania, where he failed to persuade nationalists to curb their secessionist demands, he aimed to project the air of a competent crisis manager. He received former Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe and met with U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who encountered protesters in Moscow holding up signs that read GORBACHEV, HISTORY WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU FOR THE BLOODSHED IN AZERBAIJAN...
...Kremlin conference on Friday, Gorbachev described the combatants as "a handful of militants, irresponsible adventurers and shadow economy dealers" and cast the conflict partly as an effort to undermine his policies. "Perestroika is like a thorn in their flesh," he said. "They are unable to launch a frontal attack on it, so they cling to tension on an ethnic basis...
...Last August, for instance, the Central Committee responded to peaceful protests in the Baltics with stern warnings. But the simultaneous railroad blockade of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijanis met with official silence. Armenian activists in Moscow claim that in the weeks leading up to the crisis, they bombarded Gorbachev, the KGB and the Interior Ministry with telegrams and letters warning of an imminent...