Reaching Back to the U.S.S.R.

There was a time when we thought the only thing that could bring about a reunion between Mikhail Gorbachev and Anatoly Lukyanov was a court of law.But on Monday, the last Soviet leader and the man he accused of masterminding the 1991 attempt to unseat him got together to discuss the one theme that unites old friends-turned-enemies and politicians of seemingly every political stripe: nostalgia for the Soviet Union.Both men spoke at a conference hosted by the State Duma's committee for CIS affairs, purportedly on "The Appearance of the CIS, Its Current State and Perspectives for Development." But the words "U.S.S.R." and "breakup" were heard more often than "CIS," as everyone from Gorbachev and Lukyanov to former Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai lamented the fall of the Soviet Union.Nearly all directed their rage at President Boris Yeltsin, as one of the signatories of the December 1991 agreement that finished off the Union. But even Yeltsin these days talks about a renewed, closely knit union. This outburst of Union nostalgia comes as the Russian military is taking up positions in the Caucasus in what has been hesitantly approved by the United Nations as a peacekeeping effort, while Ukraine and Belarus are preparing for elections in which integration into a new federation is a major issue.Except for the Baltics, there are powerful movements in all the recently independent states on Russia's borders for solutions that bear such comforting names as "reintegration," "a new federation," or "Euro-Asiatic Union." The reasons are couched partly in terms of security concerns, partly of economic reality. The embattled leaders of Tajikistan and Georgia have loudly welcomed Russian "peacekeepers" onto their territories. Even the nationalist candidates in Ukrainian and Belarussian presidential elections have promised closer economic links with Russia.But none of this should be taken to mean that any of the former Soviet republics are ready to give up the trappings of their independence just yet. Take Belarus, seemingly the former republic most primed to rejoin a union. Its nationalist movement is the least developed in any of the former republics, and most of its population is Russian-speaking. Cut off from the Soviet economy, Belarus has next to no means of supporting an independent economy.Moreover, the two finalists in Sunday's presidential elections, Alexander Lukashenko and Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, both favor salvaging the Belarussian economy by reuniting it with Russia's economy. Kebich's main campaign promise has been that he would bring about a monetary union of the Russian ruble with the Belarussian "zaichik" -- it means "bunny" -- the principles of which were agreed upon in April. Lukashenko, who led the first round of voting, has promised to go a step further, to restoring the Soviet Union.However, all this talk seems aimed mainly at luring voters with the prospects of a return to the better life they knew as part of the Soviet Union than a sincere promise to cede Belarus' economic sovereignty the moment either man takes office.For one thing, since April, leading Belarussian officials have balked at a stipulation that under the agreement the Belarussian Central bank would effectively become a branch of the Russian Central Bank, without the right to emit rubles.The first protests came from Belarus' central bankers, who feared they would be mere cashiers under the agreement. Then parliament speaker Mechislav Grib, who also favors closer ties with Russia, said uniting the two republics' banks was impossible because it violated the Belarussian constitution.And then there was Kebich himself: A true economic union with Russia would force the end of his proudest achievement: He has paid state debts largely by ordering the printing of more "bunnies," a policy that has helped spur inflation to nearly 50 percent per month, but allows him to boast that Belarussian workers receive their salaries -- unlike in Russia. As for Lukashenko, Russian officials were grumbling this week that if he won, the whole deal would have to be started from scratch.The allure of the Union looms on, but both Lukashenko and Kebich know they would rather be heads of a barely sovereign state than first party secretaries in a country run by Gorbachev and Lukyanov.