Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Chechen claims that two Russian planes were downed remain unconfirmed.) Even as the Kremlin promised there would be no assault on Grozny, Russian troops have nearly encircled the city and warned the bloodshed would intensify unless the Chechen forces give up. But Chechnya's President Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, decided to play chicken. Russian forces "will be attacked from the rear in a traditional tactic of mountaineers: hit and run, hit and run, which will exhaust them until they, out of fear and terror, give up," he said on Russian...
...suffering Bosnia, the first test case of cohesion following the Soviet Union's collapse, the great powers have certifiably failed. Western impotence last week in the face of the Serb assault on Bihac was the culmination of more than two years of ineffectual wrangling among Washington, its European partners and the U.N. over how the horrible ethnic conflict could be stopped. Now, as the fighting worsens again, none of the peacemaking institutions so grandly charged with keeping the post-cold war world order has the vision or unity to impose a policy...
Yeltsin has a good deal riding on a speedy resolution of the power struggle in Grozny. It is a test of his authority and political will to hold together a Russian federation of 89 ethnic republics and regions in danger of splitting apart just as the Soviet Union did in 1991. Dudayev's campaign for independence is only the most flagrant example of a growing regional revolt against the central government over issues of local sovereignty and tax policy...
European Union leaders, meanwhile, convened their own summit in Essen, Germany, to announce plans to open their trading bloc gradually to the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe. The move mirrors events on the other side of the Atlantic: If the all-American trade accord goes through, the U.S. is expected to depend far more on South America than on Europe or Japan in the next century...
...agreement to prevent future conflicts, but notably without new ideas to deal with the current battleground: Bosnia. The CSCE -- which encompasses the U.S., Russia, Canada and many European nations -- agreed to establish its own peacekeeping force and to police shaky truces in countries once a part of the Soviet Union. But this week even an effort to issue a statement condemning Serb aggression was killed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "The Russians blocked everything," Mahir Hadziahmetovic, the Bosnian delegate, complained bitterly. "There will be nothing in the final document on the most burning crisis in Europe." Why did Yeltsin...