Word: commonwealths
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...best minds are on Yeltsin's team now, and his courage saved democracy during the coup. People have to forget their quarrels in facing the coming chaos. And of course the commonwealth is now the only way to save the economy and to unite countries. The future depends on economics, not politics...
Instead revulsion against the coup resulted in the downfall of the party and an accelerated move toward complete independence on the part of the Soviet republics. That move has now killed the union completely, forced the resignation of Gorbachev, and has given birth to a Commonwealth of Independent States that is more of an alliance than a nation. To fail so totally as to bring about the exact opposite of what you want -- that calls for more than run-of-the-mill incompetence. It requires a kind of perverse genius that will make the Moscow plotters memorable long after...
...Gorbachev's admirers in the West, George Bush supported him longest and most warmly. Only after the Soviet leader's resignation on Christmas Day did Bush acknowledge that 12 new countries (not counting the three Baltic states) and an 11-member Commonwealth of Independent States had been created on the soil of the former Soviet Union. He granted recognition to all 12 and announced that diplomatic relations would be opened immediately between the U.S. and Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia and Armenia. The other six -- Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- could expect diplomatic ties once they committed themselves...
...control nuclear weapons tightly, adhere to the arms-control and troop-limitation treaties signed by the Soviet Union and advance human rights and market economies. Governments around the world quickly began announcing their recognition of the 12 new states, even as they wondered what kind of future their Commonwealth, established on only the barest sketch of a treaty signed last month in Alma- Ata, capital of Kazakhstan, will be able to build for itself. The Commonwealth members, with Russia and Ukraine in the lead, are already wrangling over how to divide up the massive Soviet armies, navies and air forces...
Possibly because it was preoccupied with its internal power struggle, Georgia moved only last week to join the new Commonwealth. Yeltsin told Gamsakhurdia that his country will not be admitted until it restores peace and respect for human rights. Though the West was concerned that such violence could become the norm in other former Soviet republics, recent flare-ups have been limited to ethnically divided Moldavia and the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Most of the population, says Russian sociologist Yuri Levada, has proved -- for now, at least -- to be "more democratic, more restrained and more peaceful than...