Word: sovereigns
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After four days of pitching their hastily improvised vision of a loosely knit union of sovereign states to wary Soviet legislators, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin tried to sell an equally skeptical audience on the viability of their new enterprise. In an extraordinary live broadcast orchestrated by ABC television that linked U.S. viewers with the Kremlin's St. George's Hall, the Soviet and Russian presidents sought to allay American fears that there would be any backsliding toward communism...
They say that the central government of the newly-named Union of Sovereign States hopes soon to establish a plan of economic reform that will move them to a market-based economy. "Very frantic work is being carried out right now," says Yuriy N. Isakov, senior counsel for economic affairs at the Soviet mission in New York City...
...create anything that could properly be called a central government. Some planners envision no more than a small secretariat that would coordinate the policies of what would be in effect independent nations. Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, favors a confederation, to be called the Free Union of Sovereign Republics, so loose that it would have no central parliament or Cabinet of Ministers at all. Moscow would retain responsibility for only a handful of functions, including border protection, communications, interrepublic transport, and carrying out a joint foreign policy that would be formed in consultation with the republics. About the only resemblance...
...name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has about it the deep sonority of history. Unfortunately, it is history -- or virtually so. Last week members of the Soviet parliament batted around suggested titles for the disintegrating union. Among the candidate monikers are the Union of Sovereign Soviet States (a Gorbachev favorite), the Euroasian Economic Community and the Commonwealth of Sovereign States of Europe and Asia. One cynic even suggested the Club of Crippled Nations...
...demise of the initials U.S.S.R. will mean that one classic Beatles tune will become archaic. But initials are tricky things. The Soviets (or ex- Soviets, as the case may be) should be careful not to name their country the Basically United Sovereign Territories...