USSR Centenary

FILE - Thousands gather outside of the Parliament in a show of solidarity with Latvians who are mourning those killed by Soviet "Black Berets", an elite force of Soviet Interior Ministry troops in Vilnius, Lithuania, Jan. 26, 1991. The most vivid consequence of its standing back came in November when East Germany opened passage to West Germany and jubilant demonstrators swarmed the Berlin Wall that had blocked off the city's Soviet sector since 1961 and began hammering chunks out of it. Although Soviet forces violently put down demonstrations in Lithuania and Latvia two years later, the fall of the wall indicated that the USSR's will to imperial power was sapped. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)