Thousands demonstrate in Baltic republics
NZPA-Reuter Tallinn Thousands of Estonians demonstrated for more autonomy from Moscow during a day of rallies in all three Baltic republics to mark a 1939 pact leading to their incorporation into the Soviet Union.
Tass news agency said 100,000 people also turned out in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and several thousand in the Latvian capital of Riga on Tuesday, the forty-ninth anniversary of the signing of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact.
Secret clauses of the pact, signed by the Nazi and Soviet Foreign Ministers on August 23, 1939, assigned Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence. In Tallinn, thousands of people at. two rallies heard charges that the Soviet Union had falsified the history of the pact and the resulting annexation of the Baltic countries after Stalin’s Red Army entered them in 1940. Soviet authorities have so far stopped short of acknowledging the existence of the secret protocols, despite their publication in two Estonian newspapers this month, the first time they have been
published in the Soviet Union.
Some speakers called for total Estonian independence from Moscow, while others suggested this was unrealistic and urged more economic and political autonomy within the Soviet Union.
“It is not enough to recognise the Soviet occupation of 1940. We have to restore our independence,” Lagle Parek, a member of an Estonian group that has urged publication of . the 1939 pact, told a rally of about 2000 people in a Tallinn park. Mikk Titma, an Estonian philosopher, warned at a later indoor rally attended by more than 8000 people that such calls were unrealistic.
“We must go the way of political realism," he said, urging Estonia to pursue “regional economic autonomy” from Moscow. The larger rally was organised by the Popular Front, a new Estonian political movement which aims for more autonomy for Estonia within the Soviet Union.
Tallinn city authorities gave permission in advance for both rallies to go ahead and the police presence was low-key.
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Press, 25 August 1988, Page 10
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331Thousands demonstrate in Baltic republics Press, 25 August 1988, Page 10
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