Russia, Ukraine, CIS

[ChrisD(RJ)]

Moldova, under the leadership of the CP, has been trying to move closer to
Russia ans reinstate teaching of Russian in Moldovan schools. When the
right-nationalists held a demonstration opposing this, they actually had to
bus people into Chisenau and pay them to get them to march for "patriotic
values." National independence for Moldova has resulted in its becoming the
poorest country in Europe. Like it's meant plummeting living standards for
everybody else in the CIS. Most people came to the conclusion that breaking
up the USSR -- with its extremely close inter-Republic economic integration
and cooperation -- was just dumb dumb dumb.

Chris Doss
The Russia Journal
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One of my favorite anecdotes from the dissolution-of-the-soviet-union era 
concerns a political meeting in one of the former republics (Estonia? 
Lithuania? Belorus?) where a frenzied argument about the virtues of 
seceding from the soviet union is unwinding. At one point a bewildered 
representative gets his turn to speak, and he croaks out, "I don't 
understand. Why should we be independent? We didn't do anything wrong!!!"


:)

Joanna