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After months of a headlong plunge toward dissolution, anarchy and possibly even civil war, the formation of the commonwealth marked the first hopeful step toward a new cohesion. As such, it swiftly began gaining additional members. On Friday Kazakhstan and the four Central Asian republics swallowed their annoyance at not being present at the creation, as well as their fears of becoming economic and cultural poor relations in a Slav-dominated family, and decided to join, provided they are given the status of co-founders. Their move brought together, however loosely, republics with 90% of the old union's people and all its strategic nuclear weapons. Only the small border republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldavia were left temporarily outside the new fold, and they too were thinking of coming in.
Which does not by any means ensure that the commonwealth will prevail, or even get itself truly organized. Its founding charter is not much more than a vaguely worded statement of intent. Its members must now actually define the policies they will pursue and form mechanisms to ensure that they really are coordinated. The alliance -- it is not really a state -- was not even a week old before its first potentially serious fissure appeared. While Yeltsin assured Soviet military leaders that the armed forces would remain under unified command, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk proclaimed that all army units in his republic -- except those controlling nuclear weapons -- and the Soviet Black Sea fleet were now to constitute a separate Ukrainian army and navy, of which he would be commander in chief.
Worse still, the commonwealth's efforts to unify economic policy are in a desperate race with the forces of hunger, cold and scarcity. So far, scarcity is winning. Severe shortages of fuel closed half the country's airports and halted domestic flights. Banks were running out of hard currency as citizens struggled with a runaway ruble. Factories called stoppages, services inexplicably ceased. Food was critically short in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ukraine and Belorussia got Yeltsin to postpone until Jan. 2 a decree freeing many Russian prices, which was supposed to take effect Monday. The delay only touched off a new binge of panic buying; longer lines than ever snaked through Moscow's streets. While the politicians bickered over the shape of the union, citizens in the former Soviet Union were worried about how they would survive the winter.
Some help is on the way. Secretary of State James Baker,taking care not to side with either the dying union or the commonwealth aborning, announced that U.S. Air Force planes will begin flying food into Moscow, St. Petersburg and other hungry cities, using military rations left over from the Persian Gulf war. He also proposed that all nations interested in sending aid to the old U.S.S.R. hold a conference in early January to coordinate who would put up how much. But a senior British diplomat grumbled that the conference "should have been held three months ago, and now it needs to be held next week. By January it might well be too late." The brutal Russian winter could cause suffering severe enough to trigger political chaos before the session can convene.