THE SOVIET UNION, after a lengthy terminal disease, has breathed its last gasp. And the one figure who tried to keep the patient alive over the last few months -Mikhail Gorbachev - is outofajob.
His attempts to convince the Ukrainians to renounce independence always doomed. Whether he could persuade the key republes to preserve some form of union was nore doubdul - but in the end, 00 cades of being waked over by the apparatus counted for more than Gorby's of clashes, between einn groups and republics:
Clearly, the new 'commonwealth' of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia wil be the most potent force among tain their stated aim of 'principles of equal rights and non-serference observing human rights and rights of peoples remains to be seen cades, old enmities and conflicts are a polent threat, as Yugoslavia demons/dies. bors Tetsh stepeacon of threats over Russia's borders do not ugur wall for the future exponent of Russian nationalism. Extreme, anis semitic Russian nabiona ISIS - whose views are rosinousnable from fascism - are gaining further into poverty As elsewhere in eastern Europe the idea that there will be a controlled economy as The Guardian suggests. is pie in the sky. With socialism off the agenda as an alternative in the short term, the potential for a side to the far right is there. The popularty of fas desperate youth of eastern Germany - who have the economic 'cushion' of western support - #lustrates the threat.
The economic threat from the West also looms large. The Ukraine. the latest republic to massively vote 0 omay oo one ortho largest European nations and the bread basket of the USSR, but econ strong in terms of grain and iron, it is totally dependent on outside sources Gorbachev has become totally interdependent on the other republics.
With economic colose bomina ever closer, so too does the throat of the IMF and the G7 industrial coun tries' control over the republics' econ mies. The best delence against fe uction to "third world struggling under a mountain of debt to the western banks, is moependence in raw materials. But with union and an economy sliding wards bankrupicy, the peoples of the east may become the 'hew poor of Europe.
The Ukraine's vote for independence is a positive step - a vote agains Great russian cominaton and for national autonomy. But for all peoples of the ex-USSR, the towards the market mean that there are many threats to come. No. 13 Dec. 14, 1991
By John Lister MONEY is the crude motive behind a new plan from health authority to close up to 350 NHS beds for elderly patients and farm them out to private nursing homes condemned by health union nerable patients in the NHS, and will force more families women) to cope unaided with elderly relatives at home.
• To cap it all, WBHA expects to coin in around €730,000 y selling NHS land in Henley and Wokingham to private firms building profit-seeking There is even a 810838I88 8IU8EI6OR danger that the new, Home News