Word: localness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nationalist drift in the Baltics has aroused fear among the region's sizable Russian minority. When the Estonian supreme soviet voted last week to impose a two-year residency requirement for voters in local elections, supporters of the pro-Russian Intermovement and Joint Council of Work Collectives denounced the measures, charging that they consigned recent Russian immigrants to a political "pale of settlement." At least 10,000 workers joined strikes at some 30 enterprises. Since most of the affected plants are under the control of Moscow ministries, many Estonians viewed the labor unrest as another in a series of provocations...
...flood of Soviets who come from the rest of the country to buy scarce goods in better-supplied Baltic shops. The Estonians discuss establishing their own credit-card system, and the Latvians talk about creating an alternative currency as early as next January. It would be paid to local workers and redeemable in special stores. Last month the Supreme Soviet finally gave Estonia and Lithuania the green light to try running their economies free of interference from central ministries in Moscow. If these experiments prove successful, the three Baltic states could serve as the economic locomotive Gorbachev badly needs...
...Baltic states also demand more say in military affairs. The Estonian government has petitioned Moscow to put more Estonians in the republic's interior-ministry forces and border guards. There have been calls to restore the tradition of local military units like the Sixteenth Lithuanian Rifle Division, and more radical proposals to create a zone of peace in the Baltics. Says Latvian Popular Front leader Dainis Ivans: "We should decide ourselves how many military bases we need on our territory and move step by step toward making Latvia a military-free zone...
...popular saying in this northern Baltic state puts it: Think nine times and speak on the tenth. Estonia's major contribution to the Baltic reform movement has primarily been new ideas, whether blueprints for popular-front movements or drafts of laws regulating economic "cost accounting" at the local level. But when Estonians do speak, they get a hearing. Last November the Estonian supreme soviet passed amendments to the local constitution, investing ultimate legal authority with the republic rather than with Moscow. That act of defiance brought on a finger-wagging lecture from Gorbachev. But the tiny Baltic state held...
...council last June whether it should "join the struggle for Latvia's complete and economic independence," the vote was a unanimous yes. In May Popular Front members opened formal contacts with the leaders of Latvian exile organizations at a gathering in France. The movement hopes to score well in local elections this December and in balloting for the Latvian supreme soviet next February. As Kezbers admits, "They have slogans, programs -- and no responsibility for the past...