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Similarly, in Moldavia the Popular Front, which claims a million supporters, demands that the term Soviet Socialist be dropped from the republic's name, but has not put separation on the agenda. It calls for "sovereignty," presumably inside a new Soviet federation. With neighboring Romania in turmoil and elections there set for May, talk of unification with the Bucharest government has been replaced by a wait-and-see attitude.
Georgia, once a kingdom and still fiercely nationalistic, might follow the Baltics out of the Union. Its newly revived Georgian Social Democratic Party has announced that it will enter candidates in the March 25 elections for the Supreme Soviet. In spite of the ethnic feuding and anti-Russian feeling in the Central Asian republics, however, none of them have mounted a significant independence movement. On balance, they receive more economic support from Moscow than they contribute to the Union. Their real aim is increased state investment, and they are worried that the center will order them to operate self-sufficiently. In Uzbekistan, for example, says Carnegie-Mellon University Professor Nancy Lubin, "the Popular Front wants to answer the needs of its own people first, and it wants Moscow's help to do it."
Economics cannot be separated from politics, least of all in the Soviet Union, and in those terms the republic with most of the cards is Russia, officially called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. With just over half the Soviet population, the R.S.F.S.R. produces 63% of the country's electricity, 91% of its oil, 75% of its natural gas, 55% of its coal, 58% of its steel, 50% of its meat, 48% of its wheat, 85% of its paper and 60% of its cement. Its treasury subsidizes inefficient industries in all the republics. Siberia supplies 3.5 times more raw materials than the rest of the country, and most of those are then shipped at below-market prices to other republics. The Soviet domestic price for oil, for example, is less than half the world price. Encountering world-market prices will be a rude awakening for the Balts, who have few significant natural resources. That prospect is not likely to deter such ardent nationalists, but it could have a chilling effect on some of the other republics.
If Gorbachev succeeds in holding most of the country together for a while, he still faces the task of designing a workable new relationship. The lackluster party platform on nationalities and federation that was approved at last month's Central Committee meeting will be presented this summer to the 28th Party Congress. It calls for a federation of "free and equal republics, voluntarily delegating part of their rights to the Union in order to attain common goals." The wording is vague enough to suggest everything from an acceptance of separate republican flags to noncommunist governments. Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, a Georgian, put it more clearly last month when he said, "If we want to preserve our commonwealth of fraternal peoples, then we must reconstitute it as a treaty union of genuinely sovereign states."