Word: kremlins
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...Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, nationalists indignantly rejected the notion that they should play by the Kremlin's rigged rules. But in Moscow, Gorbachev's apparent willingness to accept even the idea of Baltic freedom further antagonized the hard-liners and set in motion the chain of events that led to last week's coup d'etat...
...Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union had sided with the U.S. -- and most of the rest of the world -- in demanding that Saddam Hussein withdraw his army of occupation from Kuwait. For reformers like Shevardnadze, Saddam was a grotesque example of the kind of Third World thug whom the Kremlin had too often supported over the decades. One of Yeltsin's closest deputies, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation, Andrei Kozyrev, called Saddam "the child of our totalitarianism, who was nurtured under the care of our ideology and with the help of huge arms shipments...
...March 17 citizens throughout the U.S.S.R. went to the polls to vote on a Kremlin-sponsored referendum on the future of the country. While the wording was vague, the stakes were clear: a positive vote would be taken as a mandate for Gorbachev to continue the process of redefining the relationship between the center and the republics according to his own timetable, his own political instincts and his own sense of what compromises were required with the conservatives. A negative vote might be an expression of support for Yeltsin, who has favored accelerated reform. Yeltsin had by now established himself...
...referendum resulted in something close to a draw. But the effect was to strengthen Yeltsin's position. A number of Gorbachev's aides, including his Vice President, Gennadi Yanayev, stepped up their efforts at engineering a rapprochement between the Kremlin and the Russian Federation headquarters, known as the White House. "Gorbachev can take a step toward Yeltsin," said Yanayev shortly after the referendum. "Actually, he has no choice...
Meanwhile followers of Yeltsin announced that they would hold a rally in central Moscow on March 28. In a meeting at Gorbachev's office, Pugo conjured up the specter of "neo-Bolsheviks storming the Kremlin." The rally was a direct challenge to Gorbachev's personal authority, said Pugo. Gorbachev agreed to prohibit all rallies and to back up the ban with a show of force by bringing troops and tanks into the capital...