Word: moldova
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Lebed, a professional soldier all his life, has an image as a rough-hewn nationalist and patriot. As an airborne commander in Afghanistan, Tbilisi and the former Soviet republic of Moldova, he was famous for using force first and asking questions later, if at all. His troops wielded shovels to crack civilian skulls in rebellious Georgia and let fly with heavy artillery to protect Russian separatists from ethnic Moldovans. He was also fairly insubordinate. "He smashed the Russian army tradition of servility to superiors," says Colonel Victor Baranets, a staff officer at the Defense Ministry. "He calls a spade...
Even though Lebed, 45, now dresses in pinstripe suits, his bayonet-straight bearing and telegraphic speech immediately mark him as a military man. He is the former commander of Russia's 14th Army in the breakaway Trans-Dniestr region of the republic of Moldova, and he appeals to voters who yearn for a plainspoken general on a white charger to put things in order...
Actions as well as words have earned him admiration. During the hard-liners' attempted coup of 1991, for example, he led a paratroop squad that protected Yeltsin's headquarters, the White House. Tiraspol is the capital of Trans-Dniestr, a region of Moldova, one of the former Soviet republics. The inhabitants of Trans-Dniestr are largely Russian and Ukrainian, and for several years they have sought independence from Moldova. Lebed was sent to the region in 1992 to take command of the Fourteenth Army, and he intervened in the conflict between Moldovans and the Russian-speaking population. He has remained...
That is a conclusion to which several of the former satellite republics of the old U.S.S.R. seem resigned. Nationalist movements that led sovereignty campaigns against Moscow have suffered election defeats in republics as diverse as Moldova and Lithuania. Georgia, once a leader in the struggle for independence, has swallowed hard and invited Russian peacekeeping forces into its breakaway region of Abkhazia. And Moscow's troops have intervened in Tajikistan to stop a bloody civil...
...that. Despite their economic problems, many republics continue -- with good reason -- to fear ethnic and military interference from their former Russian masters. Some, like Uzbekistan, have established authoritarian governments and are no longer willing to cede control back to Moscow. Other states, such as Estonia, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Moldova, view the large minority of ethnic Russians living in their midst as a fifth-column challenge to their sovereignty...