Word: vilnius
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With that, the tanks rolled in Vilnius...
...that proposition seems less clear-cut than it did even a few weeks ago. The horror in Vilnius is a reminder that there is still a lot of trouble, and terror, left in that giant country, not to mention almost 30,000 nuclear weapons. And if Gorbachev's relatively benign foreign policy collapses because of the vicious circle of internal revolt and repression, the West may find itself waging a Cold War II in the coming years. At a minimum, the Soviet Union may be less cooperative in the Security Council the next time Uncle Sam tries to round...
...confrontation in Vilnius began to recall events in Hungary in 1956, when the Soviet army moved against a restive population under cover of another Middle East flare-up, the Suez crisis. After a week-long show of force in which armored convoys roamed the city and 1,000 paratroopers secured key buildings, Lithuanians started to form makeshift antitank barricades outside the parliament building...
Presidential spokesman Vitali Ignatenko scoffed at rumors that the security establishment was ruling his boss. His denial seemed borne out by Gorbachev's ultimatum to Lithuania on Thursday. What he called the public "demand" for Moscow to take over in the Baltics actually referred to ethnic Russian demonstrations in Vilnius and Riga orchestrated by Interfront, the anti- independence league of non-Baltic workers in the breakaway republics. Massed outside the parliament building in Vilnius on Tuesday, a wave of these workers broke down the front door before local national guardsmen pushed back the assault with fire hoses. The next...
Inside the legislative chamber, however, the republic's leadership was anything but solid. The troop arrivals coincided with the republic's worst internal political crisis since Vilnius declared its independence last March. Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene's government resigned after the parliament voted to rescind hefty food-price increases imposed just a day before. The economic reform drew outraged protests from Lithuania's Russians. Prunskiene, , a moderate widely admired for her ability to cool tensions with Moscow, also came under fire from ardent Lithuanian nationalists who consider her too soft on the Kremlin. The result, as liberals...