Word: nationalist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shortly after the procession got under way, hundreds of young monks began shouting nationalist slogans. They were quickly joined by thousands of sympathizers in the crowd. The protest escalated when rock-throwing monks destroyed a Tibetan TV transmission van, and rioters, shouting "Smash everything that belongs to the Communist Party and the Chinese!" overturned other vehicles. Fighting worsened after police and paramilitary forces stormed the temple, Tibet's holiest shrine. When calm was restored some twelve hours later, at least eight were dead...
...rioting in Sumgait, an industrial center in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, was one of the worst known cases of ethnic disorder in Soviet history. Coming after two weeks of nationalist unrest in two southern republics, it confronted Communist Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev with a problem that is not likely to go away and could blossom into the most serious political crisis of his three years in power...
...smaller group briefly pressed the same demand near Moscow's Lenin Library last week until they were hustled away by plainclothes police. In August and again last month, demonstrators in the Baltic republics commemorated their brief independence between the two world wars. Faced with this surge in nationalist sentiment, Gorbachev has called for a special Central Committee session to deal with the issue...
Gorbachev's anticorruption drive, moreover, tends to hit hardest in those republics whose quasi-feudal party leadership has traditionally operated on a basis of bribery, kickbacks and influence peddling. Such leaders, in turn, may seek to whip up nationalist resentments against Moscow to protect their own positions...
While Moscow is hardly in danger of losing its hold over the restive regions, there has been an undeniable upsurge in nationalist tendencies during the three years since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and launched his campaign for greater openness. In a speech before the Central Committee two weeks ago, Gorbachev described the nationalities question as the "most fundamental, vital issue of our society" and called for a special Central Committee plenum to deal with the problem...