Word: estonians
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...tensions in Tallinn reflect frustrations that have accumulated over nearly 50 years, following Moscow's 1940 annexation of the territory. Since then, Moscow's policies have whittled down the Estonian-controlled sector of the economy to 13% and living standards have eroded. Everything from the cost of movie tickets to bread recipes for bakeries is determined in Moscow, a condition that the Popular Front's Koik condemns as "colonialism, not economic management...
Centralization has also battered the fragile Baltic environment. Economists estimate that nearly all the pollution that fouls Estonian rivers, lakes and the Baltic Sea is emitted by industries controlled by eight Moscow ministries. An even touchier question is Moscow's role in skewing the republic's demography. During the industrialization drive of the 1960s and 1970s, the Kremlin sent huge numbers of non-Estonian workers to the region. As a result, Estonians now make up only 60% of the population. The influx has revived bitter memories of Stalin-era deportations, when tens of thousands of Estonians were branded as opponents...
...response to Popular Front appeals, some local planners are touting a scheme to turn the Baltic States into "self-financing" republics, fiscally independent of Moscow and empowered to manage their natural resources. Language is another concern: last month the Estonian supreme soviet issued a draft law declaring Estonian the official language of the republic. Plans are also being discussed to introduce a form of Estonian citizenship as a step toward controlling immigration...
...Estonian assertiveness has led to a backlash in the Russian-speaking community, where a group known as Intermovement has emerged to challenge the Popular Front. Intermovement claims 90,000 members, mostly workers in industrial areas where ethnic Russians predominate. Economist Konstantin Kiknadze, an Intermovement leader whose mother is Russian and whose father is Georgian, charges that the Popular Front wants to "exchange a Moscow bureaucracy for one that is Estonian...
...free republics, joined together forever by great Russia . . ." At 6 a.m. each day, the opening lines of the Soviet state anthem ring out in Russian from radios across the vast country. They are heard by reindeer-herding Chukchi tribesmen in Siberia, Buryat farmers near the Mongolian border and Estonian fishermen by the Baltic Sea. The words project an illusion of homogeneity that Moscow finds increasingly difficult to maintain...