Word: homeland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...powerful ministries in Moscow imposed new industries, regardless of whether they were appropriate to the region. As a result, stretches of white sand beaches along the Baltic coast became too polluted for swimming. An influx of outside manpower threatened to make Latvians a minority in their own homeland. The hardworking Estonians learned to their amazement that by Gorbachev's reckoning, they were supposed to be running a yearly deficit of 500 million rubles in the Soviet Union's federal budget...
...other Baltic states jest that being Latvian is "not a nationality but a profession," a reflection of the peculiar position of an ethnic group whose cultural survival has long been threatened. In 1935 Latvians made up 76% of the population in their homeland. By 1979 their numbers had dwindled to 53.7%. During the same period, the total of ethnic Russians in Latvia climbed from 11% to 32.8%. Thus, Latvian national aims have to be advanced through the art of compromise. At a time when Lithuanian and Estonian parliamentarians were debating whether to turn down Moscow's election-reform laws last...
...there is little happiness in Kapikule as ethnic Turks continue to flee from a draconian assimilation campaign waged against them by the Bulgarian Communist regime to a homeland that is hard-pressed to give them asylum. Refugees tell of five grim years of escalating pressure -- their schools closed, their language outlawed, their music silenced and their names changed for Slavic ones. Worst of all, in their view, Muslim worship was banned, a repression extending literally from the cradle to the grave: circumcision was forbidden, and Turkish burial grounds closed...
Recently America, admirably, has tried to tread more softly in its dealing with the Third World. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the factors motivating terrorism--a Palestinian homeland and more congenial U.S.-Iranian ties--should be especially encouraged...
Rising higher than St. Peter's in Rome and costing as much as $200 million to build, the basilica of Our Lady of Peace is Ivory Coast President Houphouet- Boigny's gift to all Africa's Christians and to the Vatican. But in his impoverished homeland, critics charge him with unseemly extravagance, and Rome seems cool to the gesture...