Word: gorbachev
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Last week President Mikhail Gorbachev finally ordered these local vigilante groups to disband, charging that they "encouraged irresponsibility" and "threatened human lives." He gave them 15 days to demobilize and hand over their weapons, and threatened to use force if they resisted...
Even if the decree is heeded, however -- and that is a big if -- Gorbachev will still face a major problem: the rot that has infected the 4.5 million- strong Soviet armed forces. It has spread beyond nationalist resentment into the very nature and role of the army itself. Estonia and Lithuania have passed legislation allowing draft-age boys to opt out of military service, and Georgia and Russia may soon follow suit. In this year's spring call-up, the number of outright draft dodgers has grown to an estimated 20,000. In Armenia a mere 7% of draftable boys...
Ivashko has prospered by carefully treading the centrist path and, like Gorbachev, making the best of the inevitable. Interviewed in his Kiev office shortly before he took up his new job, Ivashko insisted that "the Ukrainian people are masters of their own land." But complete separation from the union, he said, was "not politically, economically, socially or culturally feasible" for the Ukraine...
...paper and insisted that Ukrainian extremists on the right and left ends -- whom he termed "people made of reinforced concrete" -- are small in number and impossible to satisfy. But what happens when the leadership itself is divided, as it is in the political triangle made up of centrist Gorbachev, radical Boris Yeltsin and conservative Ivan Polozkov, the new leader of the Russian republic's Communist Party? "Fate has brought these three to such a position that they have no right to be responsible just for themselves," replied Ivashko. "They are all aware of this and will cooperate for the sake...
WORLD: After cutting a deal with Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl ascends to the diplomatic mountaintop...