Word: separatist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...council of war, and there were no recorded disagreements by Mikhail Gorbachev. A few days later, the Soviet President took to the airwaves to deliver a surprise national address. Visibly distraught, with his lips trembling at times, Gorbachev pleaded for a show of unity in the face of separatist movements and political dissension. "The Soviet Union is a superpower," he said. "Huge efforts were expended to make it so powerful, and we could lose it very quickly...
...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...
...founded on "the rule of law, not the law of the jungle." But the government of the Soviet Union, the essential partner in such a future order, still seems to favor the feral approach. Knowing the world was looking somewhere else, its army stamped a bloody boot on separatist Lithuania -- a no-nonsense warning that the union of Soviet republics will not be allowed to splinter. President Mikhail Gorbachev's verbal shrug at the violence looked like a casual reactivation of the Brezhnev Doctrine -- in his own country...
...Soviet President has immense powers on paper but little ability to rule in the separatist regions. Legvold predicts that "Gorbachev will try to sit on these people through ((Defense Minister)) Yazov. He wants it to be with as little recrimination from abroad and as little mayhem in the area as possible." After Lithuania, any republic that does not knuckle under to Moscow could feel the fist next...
...most recent customer for cluster bombs has been the repressive regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia. In September 1989 Cardoen received his government's permission to sell Ethiopia up to 1,658 of the devices, at $7,000 apiece; the bombs have reportedly been used against civilians in separatist Eritrea...