Word: lithuanian
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That force erupted on two bloody Sundays in January, when Black Beret special forces and other Soviet units killed at least 18 people in Vilnius and Riga. Last Friday, Black Berets burned a Lithuanian customs post on the Latvian border and severely beat an unarmed guard. The entrances to official buildings throughout the Baltics are barricaded with concrete slabs, some decorated with patriotic murals. Now Moscow is threatening to impose economic sanctions on any republic that secedes, and the general staff of the armed forces is insisting that the Baltic governments pay "financial compensation" for any of their citizens...
...good news. By demanding that the Balts fork over what amounts to reparations for living under Soviet occupation for 51 years, Moscow seems to have conceded the principle of freedom and opened the bidding on its price. "We are ready to start negotiations any time," says Lithuanian Vice President Ceslovas Stankevicius...
There were signals too of a slight softening in the stance of Baltic leaders. "If we see signs of a reduction of the Soviet military presence in the republic now," admitted Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, "the step can become a good signal for talks." Nationalist governments in the three republics have rejected Gorbachev's plans for a nationwide referendum in March on the future of the union. The Lithuanians and Estonians plan to hold their own polls on independence before then. That would help defuse Moscow's charges that the Baltic governments only represent the views of radical minorities...
...Riga came only seven days after army paratroops had seized Lithuania's television center in Vilnius, killing 15 unarmed demonstrators. There too the republican parliament has been turned into a fortress, with a 10-ft.-high concrete wall in front and a deep antitank ditch along one side. Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis has been holed up in the parliament building since the current crisis began in mid-January...
...Communist Party disinformation, reading statements from the so-called national salvation committees accusing the local governments of fascism. The controlled press, TV and TASS all recited the propaganda line on Vilnius last week, reporting that the paratroops acted only to restore order after they had been attacked by Lithuanian snipers. One report from commentator Alexander Nevzorov presented the soldiers as heroes besieged by "ethnic hysteria." The 15 dead, he claimed, had turned out to be victims of road accidents and heart attacks...