Word: lithuanian
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...short time ago, why Gorbachev would not do what he has now done? What about the party as the glue that keeps the empire together? An adviser to Gorbachev says the back-to-back crises in the Baltics and the Caucasus were a disabusing revelation for him. He saw Lithuanian Communists declare their independence from the central party. The Lithuanian party was playing a leading role all right; it was leading the way to secession. And then, at the height of the civil war in Azerbaijan, angry citizens of Baku tore up and burned their party cards in protest against...
...nearly five years ago. As he joked last summer, he had already died seven times and his family had been killed three times. Since the beginning of this year, however, there have been signs that the Soviet leader was stumbling in his masterly balancing act. Despite his personal mediation, Lithuanian Communists vowed to continue on their defiant course of independence from Moscow. In the Caucasus ethnic tensions exploded in a virtual civil war, forcing Moscow to send tanks into Azerbaijan in defense of Soviet power. Meanwhile, grumbling about a vacuum of leadership at the center has grown audible, as food...
...Nothing less than the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union, and possibly the survival of its leader, seemed to be at stake. The stage was set on Dec. 20, when Lithuania's Communist Party declared independence from its national counterpart. At the time, Gorbachev angrily told a group of Lithuanian parliamentarians that they had "stabbed perestroika in the heart." But Gorbachev knew that the party's maneuver was merely a dress rehearsal for the day when the republic would try to secede from the nation. In local elections on Feb. 24, Lithuanians are expected to elect a republican parliament dominated...
...time of their incorporation. There is, therefore, a historical basis for treating them as a special case. Perhaps the Kremlin aims to do just that. Last week Soviet government spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov went so far as to speak of establishing a "mechanism for divorce" to deal with the Lithuanian situation...
Even if these problems were resolved, a larger question remains: Can the Lithuanian economy survive on its own? While Lithuania's work force is well educated and diligent, its economic base is largely agricultural. The industrial sector is devoted mostly to consumer goods and electronics, but its outdated television sets and computers would not be competitive in the world market. Western corporations might be invited to form joint ventures, but there is no reason to believe they would pour huge amounts of capital into a country as small and remote as Lithuania while more lucrative opportunities exist in Eastern Europe...