Word: kremlins
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...fists defiantly, protesters last week massed at the government house in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian republic, chanting, "Lithuania! Lithuania! Lithuania!" For this fiercely independent nation of 5.4 million in the Caucasus, the troubles in the Baltics far to the north seemed alarmingly near. Georgians had already felt the Kremlin's determination to keep the union intact, when Soviet paratroopers armed with sharpened spades brutally dispersed a nationalist demonstration in April 1989, killing 20 people. Just as the Baltic states showed support in that hour of crisis, Georgians embraced the tragedy in Vilnius last week as if it were their...
...empire by democratic means!" cried a speaker at the rally. Zviad Gamsakhurdia, chairman of the parliament in Tbilisi and leader of the republic's drive for independence, urged Georgians -- and all ethnic peoples in the Caucasian melting pot -- to set aside their differences and join in opposition to the Kremlin. But he warned against giving way to provocations or taking up arms alone...
Georgians have every reason to be worried that they may be high on Moscow's target list. The republic has been on a collision course with the Kremlin ever since Gamsakhurdia's nationalist coalition won an election victory last October. The first acts of the new parliament were to drop the words Soviet and Socialist from the republic's name and inaugurate a transitional period to full independence. Georgia has announced that it will not sign the new Union Treaty proposed by Gorbachev and has sent only 10% of its quota of conscripts to the armed forces. Says deputy parliamentary...
Georgians remain suspicious of the Kremlin's intentions. They are worried that the gulf war gives the central government an excuse, under the guise of a military "alert," to reinforce troops in the republic, which shares a border with Turkey. If tanks should roll, they have vowed to take to the streets to defend their right to autonomy -- whatever the risks...
...been Gorbachev's blind spot, a yearning for which the Soviet President has neither sympathy nor patience. Though he likes to claim he is simply "enforcing the constitution," he has been consistent in his efforts to neutralize democratically elected governments in republics that threaten to slip away from the Kremlin's control. While he has put up with considerable disorder, which dismays his generals, he has demonstrated before that he is ready to use armed force to hold the union together. Now Gorbachev has adopted stale Stalinist lies by claiming he is responding to pleas from nameless patriots to protect...