Word: movement
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
Valjas has astutely chosen compromise rather than confrontation with the powerful Estonian Popular Front. He has even turned over the key state- planning portfolio to economist Edgar Savisaar, a member of the movement's executive council. During elections last March, the Popular Front did not run its own candidates against party regulars. Valjas garnered 90% of the votes in his district, but a poll for a Finnish newspaper taken just after the balloting showed that if true multiparty elections had been held, the Communists would have placed a distant second to the Estonian Popular Front...
...intriguing measure of popular support for the cause of Latvian self- determination came during the parliamentary elections, when Juris Dobelis, a leader of the Latvian National Independence Movement, ran against four establishment candidates, including First Secretary Vagris. The Communist Party chief squeaked by with 51%, and Dobelis polled an impressive 34%. When the Latvian Popular Front asked its 100-member 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...
...rapid movement provoked by Israel's kidnaping of Shi'ite Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid has given way to a lengthy process of public posturing and private dickering. Israel offered the Shi'ites a simple swap: your guys (Obeid and 150 Shi'ite prisoners) for our guys (three captured Israeli soldiers), plus the 15 Westerners held hostage. But Jerusalem's agenda is not interchangeable with Washington's: while Israel would probably jump at a deal returning its prisoners, even without the foreign hostages, it would reject any that did not bring home its three soldiers...
Elsewhere, the reaction was outrage. Britain's antiapartheid movement demanded that the rebel players be banned forever. Sports Minister Colin Moynihan advised them not to go, and Tanzanian Foreign Minister Benjamin Mkapa warned that African nations might boycott the 1990 Commonwealth Games...