Word: vilnius
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...near. Georgians had already felt the Kremlin's determination to keep the union intact, when Soviet paratroopers armed with sharpened spades brutally dispersed a nationalist demonstration in April 1989, killing 20 people. Just as the Baltic states showed support in that hour of crisis, Georgians embraced the tragedy in Vilnius last week as if it were their...
Watchers could only wonder if the crackdown marked an ominous turning point for Gorbachev's commitment to liberalize his troubled nation. Has he chosen to sacrifice his promises of change to demands for order? He appeared to have decided that Soviet unity was worth any cost. The bloodletting in Vilnius was plainly intended to warn other restive republics to draw back from demands for sovereignty -- before the troops arrive there too. Some in the West were beginning to divine a different message: a betrayal of their investment in Gorbachev's leadership. Even his well-wishers fear Gorbachev has embarked...
...fashioned iron fist remained poised last week over all three Baltic republics, which have asserted their independence from the U.S.S.R. Army paratroops in Vilnius openly threatened the Lithuanian government. Predicted President Vytautas Landsbergis, who was holed up in the barricaded parliament building awaiting the next move: "The legitimate powers in Lithuania and Latvia will be overthrown...
Fabrication of the Big Lie reached ludicrous levels in Vilnius three days after the massacre at the television center. A Soviet camera crew interviewed the major who led the attack. Identifying himself only as Vitali Ilyich -- omitting his last name -- he claimed that no one had been killed. "We shot people?" he said. "You must be fooling yourself." When asked by Western journalists about the 10 scarred bodies that had been displayed in public, he shrugged and replied, "It is hard...
That obfuscation was matched in Moscow, where no one wanted to take responsibility. Responding to questions from Supreme Soviet Deputies, Gorbachev implied that the killings in Vilnius were the Lithuanians' own fault. He accused them of violating the Soviet constitution, trampling the human rights of the republic's Russian and Polish minorities and splitting the society. Negotiations with Lithuania were hardly possible, he said, "when the republic is led by such people" as Landsbergis...