Word: popularly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hundred times. The former Soviet Ambassador to Nicaragua was called home only a year ago to take up his new post, but what Valjas has already witnessed in those tumultuous twelve months is nothing less than a revolution, from the birth of unofficial political movements like the Estonian Popular Front to the bruising constitutional crisis with Moscow over the republic's sovereignty. "For years we have gotten used to speaking of the party's monopoly on power," he says. "We have forgotten the principle that the party has power only as long as the people trust...
Valjas represents the new breed of Communist reformers who are taking power in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. He and his colleagues know that the party's prospects in the three Baltic states hinge on how quickly it can come to terms with growing popular demands for more radical political and economic change -- even if the party runs the risk of angering Moscow. So far, the Baltic challenge has not erupted in ethnic violence and social anarchy; instead, it has been subtly expressed in arcane legal debate and parliamentary procedure. For President Mikhail Gorbachev, it represents both...
...makeshift shelter decorated with placards calling for liquidation of the Nazi-Soviet pact. HOW LONG WILL THE RED ARMY BE MASTER OF OUR LAND, declares a poster with a blood-red footprint on a map of the republic. On Aug. 23, the date of the agreement, popular-front groups hope to organize a human chain from Estonia to Lithuania, a sort of Hands Across the Baltics...
...included a secret protocol that called for the Soviet takeover of the Baltics. But Baltic deputies serving on a commission to study the pact complain that Moscow representatives want to stop short of drawing the necessary conclusions about the legal standing of their republics in the union. Says Estonian Popular Front leader Rein Veidemann: "We must solve the Baltic question and recognize the fact that we were first occupied and then annexed." But what would belated recognition of that historical reality actually accomplish? "Nothing," says Latvian Ideology Secretary Kezbers flatly. "The marriage between the Soviet Union and the Baltic states...
...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...