Word: vilnius
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...Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, nationalists indignantly rejected the notion that they should play by the Kremlin's rigged rules. But in Moscow, Gorbachev's apparent willingness to accept even the idea of Baltic freedom further antagonized the hard-liners and set in motion the chain of events that led to last week's coup d'etat...
...episode further damaged him politically. By allowing Pugo and the military to use violence, Gorbachev caused many of the democrats and nationalists to give up on him. Yet by not allowing the hard-liners to finish what they had started on Bloody Sunday in Vilnius, he alienated them as well. He still commanded the middle ground between right and left, but his position was becoming increasingly lonely and precarious...
Protected by a sandbag bunker, Anatoli Seryak peers down the barrel of his rifle, scanning passing cars in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius for drive-by snipers. He is one of two men on forward sentry duty for OMON, a paramilitary unit of the Soviet Interior Ministry. Nearby, an armored personnel carrier stands guard in front of the unit's fortified headquarters. Two more sentries pace the roof. "If they try anything, there won't be a problem," says Seryak, 33, his trademark black beret tilted high on his forehead. "We're always ready to fight...
...majority of Lithuanians, though, Seryak and his colleagues are not hero-protectors but agents of repression. One newspaper has dubbed them "angels of death in black berets." Ever since Soviet army paratroopers stormed the television tower in Vilnius in January, killing 15 unarmed civilian demonstrators, OMON has been waging a campaign of intimidation against the democratically elected leadership of the republic. The same is true in neighboring Latvia, where Black Berets raided the republic's interior ministry in Riga, leaving five people dead. In their zeal to enforce the Soviet constitution and the presidential decrees of Mikhail Gorbachev, OMON forces...
...wake of the murders, Lithuanians staged a three-day demonstration, pitching tents in a field next to the Vilnius OMON base and demanding that the unit either disband or leave the republic. Dressed in fatigues and cradling automatic weapons, the Black Berets mocked the protesters. One of their own signs near the barbed wire separating the demonstration site from the OMON base read, THE SOVIET ARMY AND OMON: THE LAST DEFENDERS OF NATIONAL MINORITIES IN LITHUANIA...