Word: latvians
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...army-KGB-conservative bloc supposedly presented Gorbachev with an ultimatum that Nerlich summarizes this way: "Within six weeks he had to get things under control in the republics, Moscow and Leningrad or there would be physical ways of removing him." Janis Jurkans, foreign minister of the Latvian republic, tells a different story of a November ultimatum. He said last week that 30 days earlier, hard-liners had handed Gorbachev a list of certain "democrats" whom they demanded he remove from office. Jurkans implied that Shevardnadze's name had been on the list...
...move applauded on the right, Gorbachev replaced Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin with Boris Pugo, a senior Communist Party functionary and former chief of the Latvian KGB. Conservatives in the 2,250-member Congress of People's Deputies, banded together in a 500-strong group called Soyuz (Union), have blamed Bakatin for tolerating ethnic violence and demanded his resignation. The right, however, may not be rid of Bakatin for long. Some Kremlin watchers expect him to be named head of the President's new national security council...
...that only the first session's manner could lead to progress. When Komplektov did his "small nations" riff for the third time in 90 minutes, Aronson fired back. "Mr. Minister," he said, "you don't have to tell me about the sensitivities of small countries. My grandfather was a Latvian." Komplektov never reappeared at a subsequent U.S.-Soviet discussion on Central America...
...Riga that same day, Russian military officers and cadets in civilian clothes marched in front of the Latvian parliament. President Anatolijs Gorbunovs agreed to accept a petition from the Russians and to set up a commission to deal with their grievances. Most Baltic nationalists assume, however, that the demonstrators' real intention is to maintain Moscow's control rather than protect the rights of ethnic Russians...
...that hard to do -- especially if it's been done before. More than a month after its neighbors Lithuania and Estonia declared their independence from Moscow, Latvia last week became the final Baltic republic to split from the Soviet Union. By a vote of 138 to 0, the Latvian parliament approved the start of an unspecified period of transition to full independence. In the interim, it called for negotiations with Moscow...