[speaker001:] the most the interesting political development of the whole year and everything that's been happening in the former Soviet Union with the break up and the reconstitution
[speaker002:] yeah I agree I been interesting to see how Gorbachev has uh been releasing the power to Yeltsin including including the uh button for the nuclear arsenals
[speaker001:] well you've got to wonder what really happened in the so-called August Coup who really planned that thing out who stood to benefit
[speaker002:] yes uh I agree it's uh that's some things that nobody may ever know for sure
[speaker001:] oh well I suspect that Mister Yeltsin probably knows a lot more about it than he's ever let on
[speaker002:] yeah he may but it'll be interesting to see how this sort of loose commonwealth uh works from the standpoint of uh being as one political entity or whether it's really just going to be kind of a loose confederation
[speaker001:] well of course there's always the problem of the twelfth republic Georgia that's in a civil war right now what happens with them
[speaker002:] also uh did uh did those Baltic States did Astonia and Latvia et cetera did they
[speaker001:] no their no they they went all three of those
[speaker002:] pitch their lot in with them or
[speaker001:] Latvia Estonia and Lithuania went completely independent and had nothing to do with the commonwealth of states so they each three separate republics although I think the three of them have gone in together in some sort of confederation while they each are are supposedly independent
[speaker002:] it may be interesting to see how when they start talking about border defense whether they're gonna I think most of those independent countries are going to decide that they want to defend their own borders
[speaker001:] well then what happens in the UN Russia supposedly gets the Soviet Union's seat and what happens with the eleven other republics I guess they don't get anything who knows
[speaker002:] well I think the what Russia's going to bid for is the seat on the Security Council but I suppose that all of the other eleven can or the ten others or however many there are can be admitted as regular members of the UN
[speaker001:] I don't know if these all are really independent countries or like states in the United States it almost looks likes some ways like the old Confederate States of America is almost what this arrangement looks like
[speaker002:] yeah could be it's gonna be
[speaker001:] you've got uh eleven or twelve basically quote independent republics which are in a confederation does look a lot you know I think if we went back and looked at Civil War documents it'd be a similar arrangement to the Confederate States of America
[speaker002:] yeah could be could be although they a lot of those existed as states prior to uh to their being a Soviet Union so I I don't know
[speaker001:] well you have to look back to the great expansion of Peter the Great followed by Catherine the Great uh which pretty well set the course for what then became the Soviet Union I mean it has its roots back there in the in the early seventeen hundreds
[speaker002:] yeah that's true I don't know what uh currency things are going to be done too whether each one will have to completely establish a currency based on whatever system or whether they can rely on the ruble somehow and uh and uh
[speaker001:] oh I think one person put it aptly the ruble is rubbish
[speaker002:] well that's true probably for any of them
[speaker001:] course then the problem is what they do with their nuclear weapons that's the more interesting problem
[speaker002:] well there's only four states that have any though only the Ukraine and Belorussia and Russia themselves and then that one middle Asian the one that starts with a K Konestan or something whatever that is uh they're the only four and two of the four have said they would like to destroy them it's only that fourth one that worries me a little bit but they don't have any intercontinental ballistic missiles down there either they have short range nuclear capability and presumably not very many of them judging by where that is
[speaker001:] well who knows what they're going to do with them
[speaker002:] Russia had ninety percent of them on Russian soil so they're still going to control the by and large the large amount of those
[speaker001:] well of course the question is what Gorbachev does I guess he goes and writes his memoirs or something
[speaker002:] he's been offered a position in the United States in Colorado to teach
[speaker001:] I think he's turned that down now
[speaker002:] yeah I imagine he would because he'd have to move over here lock stock and barrel and he's still got children and grandchildren there in in Russia so
[speaker001:] well I don't think he I don't think he wants to do that but he he certainly would be like an elder statesman or whatever
[speaker002:] well he certainly give lectures around the world if he wanted to do that on an informal basis he could also uh like you say uh write a book probably be a best seller
[speaker001:] or how I survived the August Coup but really didn't survive it
[speaker002:] yeah well it's all been a outgrowth of what he started he started uh