No one really expected Deputy Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas to be the bearer of good news when he appeared before the Lithuanian Supreme Council last Friday morning. But the report that he delivered still came as a shock. Standing beneath a huge yellow-green-and-red national flag, the burly leader of the Lithuanian Communist Party offered a gloom-and-doom scenario of what lay ahead for the breakaway Baltic republic in the aftermath of President Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to cut back drastically on oil and gas shipments. "Understand me correctly," said Brazauskas, leaning on the blond wood lectern. "I have never tried to frighten anyone...
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