The Weekly Crier
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News highlights from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

News Highlights from October 5—October 12, 1998

• Latvian mercenaries were key players in a plot to assassinate Lenin and Trotsky in 1918, according to a new British book, The Iron Maze-The Western Secret Services and the Bolsheviks.
          The Latvians, recruited by British, U.S. and French agents, were supposed to help kill the two Bolshevik leaders during a performance at the Bolshoi theater in St. Petersburg. Their mission was to storm the building and block the exits. Inside the theater, celebrated British agent Sydney Reilly was supposed to grab Lenin and Trotsky and kill them.
          But the plan was never implemented because Soviet agents were tipped off about it. Reilly was forced to leave Russia, but was tried in absentia and then executed when he returned to the country in 1925.

• Two leading Estonian conservatives made a pilgrimage this past week to London to meet one of the figures who inspired them in the late '80s and early '90s—Margaret Thatcher.
          Estonian Deputy Speaker Tunne Kelam and former Prime Minister Mart Laar, both of the center-right Fatherland party, met the ex-British prime minister for several hours before a conference in London for conservative groups from across Eastern Europe.
          When he headed the Estonian government in the mid-1990s, Mart Laar named Margaret Thatcher as one of his main influences in implementing market-oriented economic and social policies.
          Kelam and Laar said they extended an invitation to Thatcher to visit Estonia.

• A week after parliamentary elections, the major political parties in Latvia continued to bicker over who should lead a new government.
          Most bets are that a coalition government will be made up of four parties-the center-right People's Party, the centrist Latvia's Way, the center-right Fatherland and Freedom and the small centrist New Party.
          The parties all have very similar economic and reform agendas, but disagree bitterly about who should take the post of prime minister.
          While his People's Party won the most votes in the election, former Prime Minister Andris Skele is deeply disliked by leaders of the other parties, who describe him as too heavy-handed. In turn, Skele and his supporters have rejected the prime ministerial candidates of the other parties, including Vilis Kristopans of Latvia's Way.
          Three of the four center, center-right parties could try to form a government on their own, but they would then have less than 50 seats in the 100-seat parliament. If all four parties succeed in forming a government together, they would have a commanding 70-seat majority.
          The two other parties winning enough votes to secure legislative seats, the leftist Social Democrats and far-left Harmony party, have little chance of joining any coalition government.
          Tough coalition talks are likely to continue until the new Latvian parliament convenes on November 3. President Guntis Ulmanis has to name a candidate for prime minister before then.

• The Latvian parliament on Thursday put off a vote on a controversial language law meant to establish the supremacy of the Latvian language in the country.
          Members of the country's large Russian-speaking minority, the majority of whom speak little or no Latvian, have criticized the draft law as discriminatory. The law would mandate that all businesses, including ones staffed exclusively by Russian-speakers, keep records in Latvian and even hold certain business meetings in Latvian.
          The delay in voting was requested by the chairman of the culture committee Dzintars Abikis, who complained that amendments to the law had made it too restrictive. As originally submitted to parliament, the law met international norms, he said.
          Provisions of the law will now be reviewed by the committee, and a final vote on it will likely be put off for several months, until Latvia's newly-elected parliament convenes.
          After Latvia regained independence, it withdrew the official status of Russian, which Moscow had heavily favored throughout Soviet rule. Latvians argue that their language, spoken by fewer than 2 million people, could suffer or even die out completely over time if it is not given exclusive status in the country.

• As part of a German-funded compensation scheme, the first in a series of new retirement homes for Holocaust survivors was opened in Lithuania on October 9. The center, which has around 30 two-room apartments, a dinning room and a doctor's office, was paid for by a special German government fund. It is located in the city of Lazdijai, 150 kilometers southwest of Vilnius and near the Polish border.
          During Germany's 1941-44 occupation, over 90 percent of Lithuania's 240,000 Jews were murdered. Today, fewer than a thousand Holocaust survivors remain.
          After Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, Jewish groups began lobbying for similar compensation provided by Germany to Jews living in the West and in Israel. But while many Lithuanian Jews called for direct cash payments, Bonn refused, opting instead to spend some two million German marks building health care facilities, like the new retirement home.
          Some Jewish leaders in Lithuania have criticized the scheme, saying many elderly Jews preferred living on their own or with their families and so would not benefit at all from the compensation package.

 

News Highlights from September 28—October 5, 1998

• In October 3 parliamentary elections in Latvia, centrist parties scored well, but the question of who would take the leading roll in forming a new government remained unclear.
          The center-right People’s Party—led by wealthy businessman and former Prime Minister Andris Skele—came in first place with 20 percent of the vote. The centrist Latvia’s Way, which has served in virtually every coalition government since Latvian independence, came in second with 18 percent. Third place, with 14 percent, was the far-left Harmony party, which headed by avowed Marxist Alfreds Rubiks. The other parties winning seats were the right-wing Fatherland and Freedom (14 percent), the leftist Social Democrats (12 percent) and the centrist New Party (7 percent).
         Observers said it was a positive sign that only six parties made it over the 5 percent threshold to gain legislative seats. Fewer parties should mean more stable governments in Latvia, which has seen over a dozen different administrations in the last seven years. But the fact that no one party came close to a majority in the 100-seat parliament, plus bitter rivalries among leading politicians, could still make stitching together a workable coalition extremely difficult.
          During the election, Latvia also dodged a bullet when a referendum seeking to nullify amendments liberalizing the country’s citizenship laws failed to go through; the vote was 45 percent to roll back the changes and 52 percent to keep them.
         Had the referendum passed—scuttling the citizenship changes—Latvia’s integration into Western Europe would have been seriously jeopardized. With news that the citizenship amendments would stand, officials in Brussels said Latvia now stood a good chance of getting a highly coveted invite to start talks on full EU membership.