Word: lithuania
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...general growled his warning over the telephone. As elite Soviet paratroopers were ordered into the Baltic republics early last week, Fyodor Kuzmin, the regional commander, rang up the presidents of secessionist Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with a stony message. If your people obstruct the mission to round up draft dodgers, he said, the troops will shoot. Four days later, in an atmosphere of mounting confrontation, General Kuzmin kept his word...
Moving to seize Lithuania's self-defense headquarters and main printing plant in Vilnius, armed assault forces opened fire at the plant, known as Press House, shooting into the air and smashing windows. Though most soldiers apparently fired blanks and only one colonel used live ammunition, eight people were reported wounded, one young man shot in the face. As air-raid sirens shrilled across the cobblestone streets of the capital's center, angry young civilians at the publishing center surrounded a tank. "Why are you here?" they screamed at a crew member. "What are you doing?" Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis...
...tensions grew, Gorbachev provided a dark hint of the Kremlin's intentions. In a strong message to Lithuania's rebellious parliament, he said "people" had lost faith in that body's leadership and "demand the introduction of presidential rule" -- in other words, an emergency takeover by Moscow...
Presidential spokesman Vitali Ignatenko scoffed at rumors that the security establishment was ruling his boss. His denial seemed borne out by Gorbachev's ultimatum to Lithuania on Thursday. What he called the public "demand" for Moscow to take over in the Baltics actually referred to ethnic Russian demonstrations in Vilnius and Riga orchestrated by Interfront, the anti- independence league of non-Baltic workers in the breakaway republics. Massed outside the parliament building in Vilnius on Tuesday, a wave of these workers broke down the front door before local national guardsmen pushed back the assault with fire hoses. The next...
...solid. The troop arrivals coincided with the republic's worst internal political crisis since Vilnius declared its independence last March. Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene's government resigned after the parliament voted to rescind hefty food-price increases imposed just a day before. The economic reform drew outraged protests from Lithuania's Russians. Prunskiene, , a moderate widely admired for her ability to cool tensions with Moscow, also came under fire from ardent Lithuanian nationalists who consider her too soft on the Kremlin. The result, as liberals saw it, was a breakdown of authority tailor-made for Moscow to exploit...