Word: commonwealth
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Even if its long-term durability has not been tested, the nascent Commonwealth of Independent States is firmly established in the world of symbols. When the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the 11 former Soviet republics met in Minsk last week, delegations arrived in former Aeroflot airliners carrying the name of their states painted across the fuselage. As the leaders sat down to begin negotiating their future, the red Soviet banner was nowhere to be seen: the concrete-and-glass conference hall was bedecked with the multicolored flags of the 11 new nations...
...Minsk meeting, the new states made a little progress. They agreed that the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the former Strategic Rocket Forces -- renamed the Strategic Deterrent Force -- will be centrally controlled by the Commonwealth. Over the next few years, three of the four states with nuclear weapons on their soil -- Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan -- are expected to destroy them or hand them over to the fourth, Russia...
...conference, said Yeltsin, "confirmed the right of each state to decide" how to organize its military "in accordance with its own laws." As it turns out, the other eight will operate under a Commonwealth "single command," dominated de facto by Russia. But whether they will be willing or able to pay the staggering costs of modern, multimillion-troop armed forces is a question they have not yet faced...
Disputes about how to divide the national inheritance will certainly go on for years. Yeltsin, master of the largest and richest state, has a clear edge in the bargaining, if territorial possession counts. The other Commonwealth members are so hostile to central government that they refused to designate a capital and created only an administrative hub in Minsk. By pointing out that Russia is just another state and Moscow just another city, Yeltsin can continue gathering up most of the pieces of the fallen giants, the Soviet Union and its Communist Party...
...overwhelming rejection of Gorbachev in the new Commonwealth -- still surprising to many Westerners -- is due mostly to his unfulfilled promises. He spoke constantly of democracy but clung to the power and bureaucracy of the Communist Party, which he headed long after it had been revealed as the main obstacle to perestroika, his plan for restructuring. Even when the party resorted to violence against him in the aborted coup last August, Gorbachev publicly pledged his loyalty to it. That was the moment at which Yeltsin succeeded to Gorbachev's authority and pushed him to close down the party...