Russia Scrambling for the Pieces of an Empire

By Bruce W. Nelan

Even if its long-term durability has not been tested, the nascent Commonwealth of Independent States is firmly established in the world of symbols. When the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the 11 former Soviet republics met in Minsk last week, delegations arrived in former Aeroflot airliners carrying the name of their states painted across the fuselage. As the leaders sat down to begin negotiating their future, the red Soviet banner was nowhere to be seen: the concrete-and-glass conference hall was bedecked with the multicolored flags of the 11 new nations.

The trappings of empire, of course, extend far beyond banners and palaces. When the domain was as vast as the U.S.S.R. with a single ruling center, its possessions were almost incalculable. They include not only the military forces, treasury and administrative machinery of the former rulers, but also the common cultural, scientific and intellectual property of the union. Sharing out the inheritance among the survivors is proving to be complicated and contentious.

At the Minsk meeting, the new states made a little progress. They agreed that the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the former Strategic Rocket Forces -- renamed the Strategic Deterrent Force -- will be centrally controlled by the Commonwealth. Over the next few years, three of the four states with nuclear weapons on their soil -- Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan -- are expected to destroy them or hand them over to the fourth, Russia.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, cautious in his estimates, says he is "reasonably confident" that the weapons are under tight control now, but he worries about the future. "We want to help them shrink their stockpiles," he says.

The Minsk conferees made less headway on the former Soviet conventional forces and weaponry. The numbers are still gigantic: 3.7 million men in uniform, more than 10,000 combat aircraft, 56,000 tanks, nearly 90,000 artillery pieces, 800 warships. Russian President Boris Yeltsin argued for central control over all this too, but Ukraine, Moldavia and Azerbaijan insisted that they had to have their own national armies. Most Soviet naval bases were in Russia, but Ukraine was quick to claim the Black Sea Fleet, which had its home port in Ukraine's Sevastopol. Without warning, Russia ordered the newest aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, to its port of Murmansk. Yeltsin later defended the transfer, noting that the Black Sea Fleet was "historically Russian." But he grudgingly conceded that Ukraine is entitled to "a share" of the Black Sea Fleet.

In the end, the conference, said Yeltsin, "confirmed the right of each state to decide" how to organize its military "in accordance with its own laws." As it turns out, the other eight will operate under a Commonwealth "single command," dominated de facto by Russia. But whether they will be willing or able to pay the staggering costs of modern, multimillion-troop armed forces is a question they have not yet faced.

The Russian President pre-empted some of the inheritance debate. Even before the U.S.S.R. went out of existence, he began to seize for his republic such Soviet structures as the Kremlin, the presidential office and staff, the Foreign Ministry and its embassies abroad, the security forces, the Communist Party's Central Committee headquarters and banks and foreign currency accounts.

Not all this high-handed accumulation is likely to stick. While Russia is the legal successor state to the Soviet Union and has taken its permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, Ukraine and other republics are demanding a share of the diplomatic dowry. Now Yeltsin has offered to give a portion of embassy property in each foreign country to any republic that opens formal relations with Russia.

That was not good enough for Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, who insisted that every state in the Commonwealth had a right to a fixed part of the former Soviet holdings overseas. He won his point, and the 11 foreign ministers are to meet this week in Minsk to discuss how to divide the property.

Much of the inheritors' discussion is over more prosaic issues of money and facilities. Russia has automatically assumed control of property and natural resources on its territory, and the other republics are doing the same. That may work for buildings, mines and wells but not for everything. The state treasury, for example, is in Moscow, but some of the wealth obviously belongs to other republics. Anticipating a challenge, Russia has warned that if Commonwealth members want to continue receiving gold mined in Russia, they will have to leave their reserves in the now Russian state vaults.

Even currency is a problem. Kravchuk complains that while the Commonwealth has accepted continued use of the ruble for stability's sake, the printing of ruble notes has not kept pace with inflation. Since the printing presses are in Russia, he says, "we could find ourselves in the ruble zone without any rubles."

Similarly, the central television network, claimed by Russia, will have to figure out how to provide national, local-language coverage to the 11 states it serves or be split up. Now that the Soviet Academy of Sciences is the Russian Academy again, some of its non-Russian members may decide to return to their home states to join existing academies there. At Minsk, the Commonwealth agreed to create an "interstate committee on space" to keep the space stations up and running; but funding has dried up, and new projects have been curtailed since the union began to come apart in August.

Great cultural monuments like the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov National Gallery in Moscow, though they are national treasures, can hardly be split up and parceled out. Their problem may be finding anyone to keep them, in an era when funds just for basics are short. "We do not have enough means," Yeltsin has admitted, "to tangibly improve the disastrous situation culture finds itself in." The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg could probably make it as private enterprises -- if they can keep Western companies from luring away their stars with fat contracts.

As for those Soviet sports powerhouses, only tentative decisions have been made. The Olympic team will hold together for next month's Winter Games in Albertville -- more or less. Athletes will compromise their national differences by marching together under the Olympic flag, and any victories they score will be marked by the Olympic anthem. The outlook for the Summer Games in Barcelona is even murkier. Russia has proposed a joint team there too; but Ukraine is balking, and several states are applying for separate membership in the International Olympic Committee. So none of the famous pair skaters or hockey and basketball teams have been broken up, but no one knows how they will fare in the future.

Disputes about how to divide the national inheritance will certainly go on for years. Yeltsin, master of the largest and richest state, has a clear edge in the bargaining, if territorial possession counts. The other Commonwealth members are so hostile to central government that they refused to designate a capital and created only an administrative hub in Minsk. By pointing out that Russia is just another state and Moscow just another city, Yeltsin can continue gathering up most of the pieces of the fallen giants, the Soviet Union and its Communist Party.

With reporting by James Carney/Moscow and Bruce van Voorst/Washington