Word: lithuanian
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...Soviet Minister's visit also began amid a flurry of mixed signals about Lithuania. On his arrival Tuesday, Shevardnadze asserted that his government's "main weapon" for resolving any issue is "honest dialogue." His claims were buttressed in Moscow, where Lithuanian leaders had gone to seek a meeting with Gorbachev, a sign that the ongoing Soviet pressure campaign was bearing fruit. The Soviet leader refused to see the delegation but sent Aleksandr Yakovlev, a close ally and member of his presidential council. By Thursday, however, Soviet troops had moved into the chief prosecutor's office in the Lithuanian capital. They...
...darkness between midnight and dawn, two troop carriers pulled up in front of a psychiatric hospital outside Vilnius and a phalanx of Soviet paratroopers in battle dress leaped out. The soldiers dashed up the stairs to the third floor, smashed doors and windows and dragged out about two dozen Lithuanian deserters who had been hiding in the ward. Some of the youths ; resisted, and were clubbed with rifle butts, leaving splashes of blood on the steps. The commander in chief of Soviet ground forces, General Valentin Varennikov, vowed that the army would round up all of the 1,500 Lithuanians...
After 18 days of growing tensions between Moscow and Lithuania, the two sides seemed at first to be inching toward de-escalation last week. Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis conceded that he was willing to hold a popular referendum on independence, and Soviet army officials offered amnesty to Lithuanian deserters who turned themselves...
...then Moscow's fist clenched again. Soviet troops, which had occupied Communist Party buildings earlier, seized government offices in Vilnius and installed a new chief prosecutor charged with enforcing Soviet, not Lithuanian, laws. Meanwhile, a senior military officer in Moscow said no offer of amnesty had been authorized and criminal cases had been opened against all deserters. While Mikhail Gorbachev had not cracked down on the nationalist movement, Sajudis, or the separatist parliament, his power play had rendered Lithuania's declaration of independence null and void...
Last week, with the Lithuanian situation coming to a boil, Bush noted that Britain's Margaret Thatcher had phoned Gorbachev. Bush wondered aloud to aides if he should call Gorbachev again. Bush was walking a high wire, supporting both Lithuania's right to be independent and Gorbachev's leadership. His message had been conveyed in public statements, diplomatic channels. But phoning is different. "Just to call," Bush explains, "say, 'Look, how's it going? What do you think about this?' I learn from it. I mean, it's a two-way street. It's better than a cable...