Word: popular
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...their descendants in order to convene an Estonian National Congress to discuss the fate of the nation. Organizers deny that they are creating a rival parliamentary body, but the fact that some 100,000 people have responded has caused concern within the ranks of the party and the Popular Front, and deepened the mistrust of the Russian minority...
...authorities in Tallinn signaled last week that they were growing impatient with Russian agitators who have been using labor protests to press their demands. The authorities invoked a resolution recently passed by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to ban the strike and issued a call for "common sense." As Popular Front leader Veidemann notes, "Our greatest danger lies in creating two separate societies, as in Northern Ireland and Lebanon...
...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...