Word: estonian
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...Estonian-born Aleksy, the first freely elected head of the Orthodox Church since the Bolshevik Revolution, may be a national leader long after Gorbachev leaves power...
...leaders of the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also pressed ahead with their challenge to Gorbachev, possibly hoping to make their case an issue at the summit. The presidents of the three republics met on May 12 in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, to form a united front by reviving the Baltic Council, a policy-coordinating body that dates from before World War II. They sent a letter to Gorbachev asking for joint negotiations on independence. Gorbachev responded last week with two decrees that said the Baltic states were violating the Soviet constitution...
...following afternoon some 5,000 demonstrators filled the tiny square in front of Tallinn's pink-and-white Toompea Palace, the Estonian seat of government. It was a Russian-speaking crowd, carrying banners calling on workers to DEFEND SOVIET POWER and demanding the resignation of President Arnold Ruutel. When the protesters broke through a locked gate into the palace courtyard, Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar put out a radio call for help, crying, "We are being assaulted. This is a coup attempt." Crowds of Estonians rushed to the square and pushed the Russians...
...Estonians contend that, technically speaking, they are not seceding. They are simply restoring the sovereignty that Moscow guaranteed them "unconditionally and for all time" in 1920 -- then violated under the terms of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which led to Stalin's annexation of the Baltics. Estonian legislators want the issue of independence placed on the agenda for a Helsinki conference that Gorbachev has proposed to lay the foundation for his much touted "common European home." Legalists in Tallinn cite the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which guaranteed the country's neutrality in exchange for the withdrawal of Soviet troops...
Like the Lithuanians, the Estonians are bracing for a showdown over the issue of military conscription. The Estonian parliament has approved a law on alternative military service, and plans to dismantle local draft boards. Local movements like Geneva-49, a citizens' action group opposed to the draft, have denounced service in the Soviet army as a violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions barring citizens of occupied states from having to serve in the occupation forces...