Word: gorbachevized
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...They were polite, in some cases even supportive, but in virtually all cases cautionary. Here was the U.S. occupying a neighboring country just when the Soviet Union finally seemed to be getting out of that business. The Kremlin did some remonstrating of its own. At their Malta meeting, Mikhail Gorbachev had complained to Bush about the U.S.'s military muscle flexing during the attempted coup in the Philippines; now here was Uncle Sam in Panama, again seeming to relegitimize the use of force...
...touched down in Vilnius the dignified statesman, expecting to rely on his charm and diplomatic skills to work out a compromise. But when the first cry of Samostoyatelnost! -- independence -- sounded from the Lithuanian crowd, Mikhail Gorbachev rapidly abandoned the strategies of genteel diplomacy and adopted the tactics of a ward politician bent on maintaining his lock on a balking constituency. "Independence?" he shouted above the insistent cries. "Let's have it. At the workplace. In cities. Republics. But together...
Wading into crowds, the Soviet President proved himself a master of street theater, improvising historical, philosophical and legalistic arguments as he pressed his appeal to Lithuanians to step back from their threatened breach with Moscow. When his entreaties met with smiles and shouts of "Bravo, Gorbachev!" he answered with poignant appeals. "My personal fate is linked to this choice," he reminded the crowds. When he read resistance in the faces of his listeners, he fumed and lectured, employing the Socratic method to grill his audience...
...Vilnius fuel-machinery plant, he spied a sign in Russian reading not more rights but full independence. "Who gave you that?" Gorbachev challenged a Lithuanian welder. When the worker replied that he had made the sign, Gorbachev switched to a softer approach, commending the man on his grasp of Russian. But the worker would have none of Gorbachev's compliments. "You don't think we know how to write in Russian?" he challenged. "We can read and speak Russian too, while there are lots of Russians who can't speak a word of Lithuanian...
...understand independence?" Gorbachev shot back...