(3 of 3)
Does that seem to contradict the republics' right to "free choice of forms of . . . economic management"? Well, these central union powers are to be exercised "together with the republics" -- a phrase that occurs over and over in the draft, and seems less a clarification than an invitation to conflict.
One major question: since the 1922 constitution setting up the Soviet Union * would be dissolved, would republics be able to secede merely by refusing to sign the new treaty? Grigori Revenko, a member of Gorbachev's current Presidential Council, has suggested that the rebellious Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, at least, would not be allowed to go as easily as that; they would still have to negotiate with Moscow over property issues. And they might not be the only ones. Akaky Asatiani, a leader of the Georgian parliament, said flatly last week that Georgia "will not sign the federal treaty," and Mircha Snegur, president of Moldavia, cast doubt on whether his republic would either.
Thus debate on the new treaty will begin with only 10 of the 15 republics committed to try working out something they could sign. That is hardly an auspicious beginning for what may turn out to be a last-ditch effort to keep the Soviet Union from disintegrating into little more than a name -- and maybe not even that.