Word: vilnius
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same time avoiding any U.S. steps that might play into the hands of Mikhail Gorbachev's conservative opponents at home. Every time Gorbachev turns up the pain on Lithuania, Bush winces, and he had plenty of reason to grimace last week. As Soviet armored vehicles paraded through Vilnius, the capital, Moscow closed Lithuania's border with Poland and expelled Western reporters from the republic...
...more political courage than political wisdom. Neither quality has been much in evidence from those members of the U.S. Congress who have called for formal recognition of a free Lithuania. Such a thing should and may someday exist, but it cannot be voted into existence by legislators in either Vilnius or Washington in defiance of Moscow. By applauding a morality play as though it were itself a happy ending, Congress is only increasing the chances that it will turn into a tragedy...
...frigid darkness between midnight and dawn, two troop carriers pulled up in front of a psychiatric hospital outside Vilnius and a phalanx of Soviet paratroopers in battle dress leaped out. The soldiers dashed up the stairs to the third floor, smashed doors and windows and dragged out about two dozen Lithuanian deserters who had been hiding in the ward. Some of the youths ; resisted, and were clubbed with rifle butts, leaving splashes of blood on the steps. The commander in chief of Soviet ground forces, General Valentin Varennikov, vowed that the army would round...
...then Moscow's fist clenched again. Soviet troops, which had occupied Communist Party buildings earlier, seized government offices in Vilnius and installed a new chief prosecutor charged with enforcing Soviet, not Lithuanian, laws. Meanwhile, a senior military officer in Moscow said no offer of amnesty had been authorized and criminal cases had been opened against all deserters. While Mikhail Gorbachev had not cracked down on the nationalist movement, Sajudis, or the separatist parliament, his power play had rendered Lithuania's declaration of independence null and void...
...until the birth in 1988 of Sajudis, the nationalist movement that now dominates the local parliament, Landsbergis was not an activist. "He was no more of a dissident than the rest of us," recalls Jonas Vruveris, a former colleague at the Vilnius State Conservatory, where Landsbergis used to lecture on the history of music. Landsbergis quickly gained a reputation as a shrewd strategist and within months emerged as Sajudis' chairman. "No one else has been so capable of forging a united position out of the multitude of positions that exist here," says member Eduardas Potasinskas...