Word: riga
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That force erupted on two bloody Sundays in January, when Black Beret special forces and other Soviet units killed at least 18 people in Vilnius and Riga. Last Friday, Black Berets burned a Lithuanian customs post on the Latvian border and severely beat an unarmed guard. The entrances to official buildings throughout the Baltics are barricaded with concrete slabs, some decorated with patriotic murals. Now Moscow is threatening to impose economic sanctions on any republic that secedes, and the general staff of the armed forces is insisting that the Baltic governments pay "financial compensation" for any of their citizens...
...concrete walls seal off the narrow cobblestone streets leading to the Latvian parliament in Riga's Old Town. Four barricades block access to the small square in front of the building. Milling around bonfires near the parliament's entrance, wearing combat gear and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, are militiamen loyal to the republic's separatist government. At other bonfires in nearby Cathedral Square, hundreds of Latvians stand vigil through the night, listening to passionate music and somber poetry blaring from loudspeakers...
...attack in Riga came only seven days after army paratroops had seized Lithuania's television center in Vilnius, killing 15 unarmed demonstrators. There too the republican parliament has been turned into a fortress, with a 10-ft.-high concrete wall in front and a deep antitank ditch along one side. Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis has been holed up in the parliament building since the current crisis began in mid-January...
...events inside the U.S.S.R. "The Soviets are sensitive to what is being said abroad," says a French official. "But frankly, we can't hope that what we do will cause Moscow to change its behavior." Moreover, some analysts advise that punishing Gorbachev for the blood spilled in Vilnius and Riga by withdrawing Western aid might undercut him and strengthen Soviet hard-liners. A U.S. official points out that almost all the aid Washington has pledged "will benefit the reformers and not the reactionaries...
...Riga, capital of Latvia, ethnic Russians staged pro-Moscow demonstrations and Soviet troops raided the police academy, carrying away its weapons. As in Lithuania the week before, party loyalists put together a shadowy, no-names- please committee of "national salvation" to call for presidential rule from Moscow. Communist Party organizers brought thousands into the streets of Tallinn, the Estonian capital, to demand the resignation of the elected government...