(00:00:00) I think over some time that you will see a rather loose kind of Confederation the logic of a common market indeed. You might even see it spread into to Eastern Europe. A lot of that will depend upon the internal developments how rapidly market economics move into certain areas in the baltics. It's moving quite rapidly relatively speaking as it is in Poland in Russia. It may move more slowly certainly in Central Asia. It'll move a lot more slowly Hedrick Smith is with us today. His book is called the new Russians recently updated with four new chapters on the latest things that have happened in the Soviet Union in the past few months. What do you think the United States should do then in reacting to and relating to these various countries and that sort of loose affiliation that you see coming. Well, I think the first thing we have to recognize is that that this is their show this happened all these changes happen because of the internal Dynamics Then the Soviet system its failures and the impatient and dissatisfaction of people within that system intellectuals Engineers scientists, even members of the Communist Party apparatus, including Gorbachev and Yeltsin and others people in the army people in the KGB. It was not Star Wars or some Western policy that caused this to happen. It certainly was a success of the western economies and the Japanese economy Soviets traveled abroad and saw how much better off people were in the other the rest of the world and I think top Soviet military people and others recognize that the every time they got in a technological race with us, they got they got licked so I don't think it was specific policies but the general performance so we did have an influence at the margins, but it had to come from within I think the same situation continues today. We can't remake that system. We can't push them to go definitely one way or another but we can have an influence at the margins and an influence of the margins when things are kind of Tippy can be very important. I think we can have an important influence. I think what they need, obviously, there's winter they're going to need something that you all have a lot of right here. And then it's going to need some grain. They're going to need stuff to make bread. Most of all so people don't starve this winter and I think food credits and that kind of stuff Emergency Medical Aid. I think those things are coming important. They may need some help in terms of putting off their debt repayments. My understanding is they out of a very bad period of six months ahead, but then after that their debt scheduling is not quite so severe and they may be able to handle it but you know Bob I think more than anything else. What's needed is human connections? Human relations what I call Talent Aid everybody else calls it technical Aid and that makes it sound in personally. I will ship them a bunch of technical a now what is technically it sounds like machinery and equipment what it really means is some kind of inner connection between the new the 7 million people in the Soviet economy who are now part of the private sector, which is largely unknown in this country. They need to know how to run their businesses. If you were to go to privatize the land in the Soviet Union tomorrow, the farmers would know how to buy tractors or Machinery or equipment or fertilizer or seeds because there's no credit system and there's no infrastructure there for them to buy this they kind of know rural economy there no University Agricultural Extension systems things that are taken for granted particularly in this part of the the United States if you wanted to privatize all the apartments tomorrow and tell people they could own their own homes. There's no Home Mortgage system to set up the people are now running the government in Moscow. Leningrad in sverdlovsk in Volgograd and Cuba Chef in Gorky and I could go on and on and on are people who were elected as Democrats a year ago. But before that they were College professors. They were researchers. They were engineers. They were workers. They were Housewives. They were teachers. They don't have any professional background in public life and public policy. So actually there are people working at the National Endowment for democracy in Washington to help set up seminars to train these people and I was talking not long ago with Ken Wallach at the national Democratic Institute who runs some of these seminars. He said you cannot believe the hunger they had we have for that. We're at we operate these seminars in Romania and in Poland and summon Latin American so forth the help build the infrastructure the institutions of democracy. He said I've never seen any of those seminars where there was more enthusiasm more hunger to learn than there were in Russia and he said we didn't have enough money and enough staff to handle on a couple hundred people, but there are several thousand people who have been elected to City council's and City governments all across the Soviet Union and we're spending the Magnificent sum of something like 300,000 dollars on that at the moment and we could do multiply that by 10 or by 30 and we wouldn't be spending very much money. But we'd be helping people who are desperately important to making it to giving that system a chance to survive. So that's the kind of thing and I wouldn't call that technically they'd call it human 8. I mean we get the Peace Corps at the moment is legally barred from operating in the in the territory of the Soviet Union. It can operate all over the world including Eastern Europe at legally. It's bar. It seems to me be smart to let the Peace Corps going the Soviet Union. There's a thing called the executive service Corps. We could be doing that. There are I don't know whether or not there's a Minneapolis st. Paul sister city somewhere in the Soviet Union, but I would bet there is and it's certainly true of lots of other cities in America all kinds of things that can be done on a very personal level in terms of building the things that we take for granted and our lives and not necessarily that we Americans have all the right answers. Maybe they can get it from Poland or Sweden or Zil or Germany or England or France or Italy? But simply that we are willing to help I mean moral support is terribly important at the moment to so I think there's a lot that can be done and it's foolish to see it just in terms of can we do a big Marshall plan or can't we number one? I think we probably not have a mind to do it. But number two, I don't think it would work. Anyway, the Marshall Plan worked because before the war before World War II there was a democratic capitalistic infrastructure in place in France and Germany and Italy and so on and so forth and it was possible to revive that the Soviet Union you're going through a huge scratch structural change, its got to take place and you can't do that. It's not a money problem first and foremost. I mean, there are money needs I don't want to say there aren't but it's wrong to cast the problem in those terms at least in the from what I've seen in my 10 or 11 months in the Soviet Union over the last three years and traveling to 25 or 30 cities around the country Hedrick Smith is with us. The new Russians is his updated book and we have a number of folks in the line with questions. And we'll get first to you. Thanks for waiting. You're on the air. Where are you calling from? (00:06:43) South Dakota? Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Most recently hear people saying in our government other places that the defense of establishment in the USSR. We're going to call it still continuing but just in this last week's Aviation week and space technology magazine. There was an article in there saying that there may be evidence that there are already starting to stop some of the building of like mig-29s and other aircraft, you know anything about that. (00:07:20) I can't tell you specifically about the MiG-29. I'm not up first and foremost a military expert but I do know that there are specific military factories that are being converted to civilian production that they have committed themselves to reduce their Armed Forces by 700,000 people over the next two or three years on top of the arms agreements that we've reached with them that they that is soon as we ratify the It is strategic offensive nuclear weapons agreement, which both sides need to do rapidly. Both sides are committed to cutting those weapons and Gorbachev has said publicly and so is Yeltsin that they're prepared to destroy them on a much faster scale than that agreement requires, and I've talked to people like Anatoly sobchak who is the mayor of Leningrad which has a fairly sizable military industrial complex being one of the Cities which has some of the best educational institutions in the Soviet Union and he is eager to have Western companies come in and help with the conversion of military factories to civilian production. Not as a matter of aid but as a matter of setting up joint ventures where profit can be made on both sides. So there is great Readiness on the part of particularly the people who fought the coup fought the Old Guard fought the right-wing leaders of the military. And by the way, the military certainly wasn't unified. It was split one of the reasons the coup failed so All kinds of opportunities there. I can't tell you specifically whether or not you're coming about the MiG-29 is right, but Aviation week's been pretty right an awful lot of other things. I'd be inclined to bet on it. Let me follow up briefly with a question about the situation in Ukraine. If in fact they want their own Army and Navy Air Force if they want to maintain control to some extent of the nuclear weapons. Is that a serious threat or does that fall into that category of the teenager getting first crack at driving the car? I think it falls kind of in between obviously any time any country wants nuclear weapons. It's a serious thing. I don't think we can treat it any other way, but I think that if you put yourself in the position of the ukrainians, you can somewhat understand that this may not be as threatening to the rest of the world as it sounds the way I read the comments that have been made by Ukrainian officials and they may be saying something else privately but at least in the comments that their quoted and saying is that since there are nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory put there by the Soviet Armed Forces, they want one of the two keys that is needed to fire those weapons because they don't want anybody else having the right to fire weapons from their territory without their permission. That doesn't sound to me like an aggressive position that sounds like a self-protective position. So I don't see that as threatening the Ukrainian foreign minister said in the parliament two days ago that under the current strategic arms agreement if it is ratified, the Ukraine is committed to the destruction of a hundred and thirty strategic nuclear weapons based on its soil and it is committed to their destruction that would leave 40 more strategic nuclear weapons not affected by that agreement, but he said we are prepared to go further as soon as another agreement is negotiated and I was we're ready to be part of it. So I don't see I don't see anybody issuing threats and I don't see obstructionism. I see a people saying we're going to assert our sovereignty and we're not going to have somebody else say when whether or not these weapons are going to Fired. So I think that can be managed if it's intelligently handled. Now. The problem will be is if Big Brother Russia says wait a minute. We put those weapons there. We want to control them don't tell us what to do. But my sense is that Gorbachev and Yeltsin and those folks are smart enough to recognize that they're playing with dynamite here or nuclear tiny mite if you will, which is worse and that this is something that's just got to be handled intelligently politically and diplomatically. I think it behooves all of us to get going even faster on reducing the nuclear arsenals and not necessary the threat isn't there you can certainly take him down to levels where the Ukraine wouldn't have any left at all and there would be no problem. And if the Russians want to keep some and we want to keep some we'd have more than enough to cope with the Saddam Hussein's of this world Hedrick Smith is with us today his book. The new Russians has been updated to include the failed coup. Last August. Let's move on to this next listener question. Thanks for waiting. Where you calling (00:11:42) from. I'm calling from Duluth. Sure. Mr. Smith. You describe the ukrainians as being liked. New Year's with with the new car one of the things that intrigues me is Central Asia and the seeming reluctance to depart from the the old Soviet Union. I keep remembering all the stories. I heard during the Afghanistan war about how the Central Asian troops were relegated to menial jobs. And we're not allowed to carry rifles course that was during some of the height of the Iranian Shiite fundamentalism. Can you give me some explanations as to why the Central Asian Republicans Republic seem to be hanging onto the Soviet Union and (00:12:25) Gorbachev? Yeah. Well, first of all, it was it was more than the Central Asian troops weren't allowed to fire rifles initially when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, they use some of the military units that were stationed closest to Afghanistan and those were largely made up of Central Asian troops what they found out was that there was no great desire and the Out of the central Asians to kill other Central Asians, even though they were another nationality from across the border. So they quickly had to pull those troops out of there and put in Russians and ukrainians and kids from Latvia and Lithuania and elsewhere who didn't like it either but at least they were more the Russians felt. They were more loyal I think to ask answer your larger questions about Central Asia and it's cling to Russia. I think that I go back to a comment. I made just a few moments ago that my impression when I travel through and talk to people and is Becca Stan and haven't been to Kazakhstan but the kirgizia and took Mania and Tajikistan is that I'm back in the Middle East of Egypt and Sudan and the Yemen and so forth that I was with Yemen's probably not fair. It's more modern than that, but these are these are regions in which the the general level of the political culture. Is that of a 19th century colony. Of course, you run into sophisticated. Gated people and then Tashkent. I remember the poet Muhammad Sally could talking with him for hours and he's a 20th century man, very sophisticated the person and their other scientists. I talked to and so forth who are leading some of the nationalist movements there, but they tend to be much thinner in those societies than you find them in the Ukraine and the Baltic republics or in Russia. And I think it's because the level of political culture is is just further behind and there is that 19th century colonial mentality towards Russia. Russia has brought modernization as brought Health Systems has brought Educational Systems has brought industry to the major cities of those regions and I think there's a sense that Russia is their protector that a being affiliated with Russia makes them part of a great power. I think they'll outgrow that I think it'll and and and they'll have to try to begin to pull together part of it is also that there's some antagonisms among those nationalities and the Russians become the Brokers and the Him and the moderators if you will among the tajiks in the Cossacks and it was Beck's and others so that that the connection with Russia is one of protecting yourself against some of the other nationalities and in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular. They're fairly sizable communities of Russians. There there Tashkent is a city of a couple of million two and a half million people and there are several hundred thousand Russians living there in part of Kazakhstan. There are an awful lot of Russians living in the areas where Crews have carried out some of his land reform program. So there's a their ethnic connections with the with Russia that are important to number of folks with questions for Hedrick Smith who's with us today, but I want to get to them also introduce another topic which might prove grounds for some questions from folks and that deals with the coup. Why did the coup fail and why specifically did the military and the KGB not cracked down on the public. Well, you've asked two very good questions, I think Most of us think the cool failed because of the people who were at the barricades who dared to Rally around Yeltsin because of yeltsin's defiant stance towards the coup plotters towards the gang of eight the committee of eight leaders who put the two together and I think that's part of the story. I think that is that The Bravery of Yeltsin and the courage of those people but that's only one of three dramas that took place that were crucial the second drama was one that took place outside of Moscow and Leningrad a couple hundred thousand people demonstrated in murmansk people demonstrated way up in the north and near the Arctic Circle in sverdlovsk, 2,000 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains and kissing you off the capital of Moldavia and Kiev in the Ukraine in Volgograd and so forth around the country there were newspaper editors and broadcast stations and local city governments and provincial governments who sided with Yeltsin and against the coup. So there was no way to just simply have a Crackdown the way Chinese did in Beijing in 1989 in Tiananmen Square they even if they had taken the White House, there would have been a continuation of the rebellion in Leningrad. And by the way, Yeltsin even had plans to set up a government in Exile. So to speak in sverdlovsk out in the Ural Mountains and defy the cuso they were lots of plans to carry on. That's the second drama. The third drama is the one that you alluded to and that is the collapse of loyalty within the coup to the coup by the subordinates by units in the Army. I was just there and talk to people who know are close to General shaposhnikov the new Soviet defense minister at the time of the coup. He was the Air Force Commander at one point when the coup plotters were thinking of assaulting the White House where Yeltsin was hold up the Russian Parliament building which was surrounded by those crowds. There was some talk of sending Commando units to land on the top of the building and helicopters and then to assault it through underground passageways under the building it's over. Supporting cough said the as off if you use those helicopters, I will scramble Air Force Fighters against the helicopters. Okay. I've been tremendous change the general labid the paratroop commander of the Thule division, which was sent to surround the White House happened to be one of the officers with whom Yeltsin had met during his presidential campaign in June when he was campaigning for the Russian presidency. He went to Tula which is a city about a hundred miles outside of Moscow campaigned among those troops in the coup plotters clean. Forgot that that these were people who had voted 50% or more for Boris Yeltsin only a couple of months before the coup, which is a fairly stupid thing to do and and on and on I could tell you a lot of interesting stories about the affections about KGB units that were called on to attack the White House refused KGB surveillance agents who were supposed to arrest people instead of arresting them tip them off and told him the arrests were coming in and how to get away to safety and so it broke down and lots of ways the the coup plotters fundamental failure, I think. Was the failure to understand how much the country had changed in the previous three or four years how much the spirit not the institutions but the spirit of democracy had spread in that country how much people did not want to go back to stalinism and how their own power from within their institutions the Army and the KGB were no longer monolithic and the power of the people the top had become an empty shell. I think it's really a testimony to how much change had already taken place in that country because the coup would not have been beaten if it had happened three or four years before and in some ways the coup plotters waited until too late Hedrick Smith is with us. The new Russians is updated book and will turn to you for a question next. Hello there. (00:19:31) Hi, I'm calling from Minneapolis basically all we ever hear about on the problems problems with the politics of problems in the in the economy in the baltics with the nationalities. I would like to ask. Mr. Smith in his view. What did the Soviets themselves have to be optimistic. About over the long run and what does the rest of the world have to be optimistic about vis-à-vis the Soviet Union over the long run as well. Thank you. (00:19:55) We don't even have to wait for the long run. What we are witnessing is one of the great human epics. We are watching human progress take place. We are watching people move from Darkness to light from dictatorship towards democracy. We're watching an incredible spectacle of Courage think of what you saw on your television set when you were watching in those days of August. You are watching One Army which was sent in organized units of hundreds of Tanks by command from the bosses up above it didn't stay loyal to them, but that's how it was deployed. And you watched another Army that was recruited. Literally one by one in which every single person who went to the White House from Yeltsin on down to the youngest people there and they're worried. Some foreigners there had to say if I don't go there's a risk we're going back into darkness that Army recruited itself one by one that is a magnificent story in and of itself .1 .2 there were no people in the legal private sector in the Soviet Union in 1987. There are now seven million people working in the private sector. I just talked to last trip to Moscow Vladimir taken off was a friend of mine who was a head of the Union of Cooperative associations cooperatives are euphemisms in the Soviet Union for private Enterprise to have a Cooperative. You have to have three people you have Mom Pop and jr. You've got a cooperative and most of the world you would call that a private business but in the Soviet Union legally, you have to have three people in order to form a Cooperative 7 million people working in that sector sector repairing watches repairing shoes running restaurants running grocery stores building houses building highways producing Petty textiles shirts on Underwear all that kind of stuff producing this year taking off estimated a hundred billion rubles of output. There are today operating in the Soviet Union 400 commodity exchanges a year and a half ago. There was Zero. These are very primitive. This isn't the Chicago Board of Trade. This isn't the grain pit but there are people there who are beginning to trade thousand television sets for 20 truckloads of cabbages or what have you. It's going what that is is the beginning of private trade and it's literally sprung up very rapidly take a look at the environmental movement. I mean I could go on for a long time. There's a lot of this stuff in the book. I think it's an incredible story and people ought to feel very positive about the environmental movement in the Soviet Union since the Chernobyl incident in April 1986 has forced the shutdown of at least four maybe five nuclear reactors prevented the expansion of several others the environmental protest movement in other areas has forced the change in operations. Several hundred different industrial plants. It's incredible. There are probably two it religion. They're probably two or three thousand churches now opening around a now open and operating around the Soviet Union since in the last two or three years. There are now effective parliament's operating in a country in which nobody ever voted. No, I mean nobody ever voted. No in the last 70 years. They now have open debates. I mean that's unbelievable the rate of progress. There has been a revolution that has taken place without millions of people dying the last Revolution and then the in Russia in 1917 millions of people died now, unfortunately in this in this period a thousand people are so have died, that's terrible, but that's nothing. I mean more than a thousand people have died in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh in the same amount of time and nobody's paid much attention in the outside world. What's amazing is that we're watching the greatest peaceful revolution in the 20th century. We're watching the dispersal of power. It's a magnificent story and the problem You're exactly right everybody focuses on the problems and there is zillion problems, but the progress is unbelievable. Look at the degree of safety that we feel I'm and my dedication and this book I dedicated my children and said, you know, may you live a life of a better piece than we live my children your children are safer today because of what's happened in the Soviet Union were able to talk about getting rid of all these nuclear weapons in in a much more practical way than before we might even think about spending some of that money on some things we need to do at home. I mean, they're endless positive benefits coming out of this in my opinion. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I don't think so. I think we ought to stop and think about those things. I appreciate the question. Do you think the Soviet Union is likely to become an economic Powerhouse similar to Japan Germany Britain United States. I don't think so Bob and any kind of near-term time timeframe and that would include two or three decades the comparison I would make and have made is to the opening of Japan. Hand by Commodore Perry in 1853 that began to move ancient Japan into the modern world and it took about a half century for Japan really to get modern institutions took just about to the year 1900 then of course now we're living with the consequences. I can't say to you that the Russians will go that way that far be that effective but we are seeing a civilization which is being jerked from one point in his history one stage in which essentially a lot of history had stopped and slow down Russia was becoming part of modern Europe at the end of the 19th century the beginning of the 20th century. Then the Bolshevik Revolution came along and most importantly Stalin came along and really stop the process of History. It's resuming that process and I think it's going to take another 25 or 30 years really for there to be a new system formed that is stable in the rest of us can relate to and And I think that they they could be an economic Powerhouse there a hundred and fifty million people. They are very talented people and if they can get organized they can be contribute tremendously. Just as Germany hasn't just as Japan has I don't think we need to be afraid of that. If we take care of ourselves the key is do we ourselves become maximum productive working together an effective as a society back to the phones more questions for Hedrick Smith who is with us today to talk about some of the things that you'll find in his updated book the new Russians. Thanks for waiting. You're on the air. (00:26:20) Hi. Good morning. We enjoy your mr. Smith on Washington (00:26:23) Week was nice to talk to (00:26:24) you. I'd like to throw a net you in terms of sort of political but kind of strategic and that is whether or not the reaganites claim that keeping the pressure on really cause the well, you might say the demise of the fall of the Communist Union over there or whether or not it was an internal collapse and whether the you know, just have happened. Anyway, (00:26:46) I've You said something about that earlier? I don't believe it was Star Wars or the Reagan pressure. I do believe that the effective performance of the western economies since the war and the fact that the we in the west and the Japanese did so much better than the Soviets in the East Europeans caused an awful lot of Soviets Russians to stop and think that their system wasn't working. So well, I kind of compare it to people who were riding in a propeller driven airplane. Suddenly. They turn around everybody else is riding in Jetson, they're going faster and then their problem is they decide, you know, maybe we ought to use some Jets to and so they are riding along in their aircraft and somebody says, yeah, let's put a jet engine out on one of our wings. So they send a bunch of guys out on the wing and they attach a jet engine and it tilts to one side. So we better put a jet engine on the other side. This is kind of this odd Hoke improvised reform that Gorbachev, but we're going to put a jet engine on the other side and then somebody says well, okay now we've got a mixed economy, or maybe not Got capitalism. Let's cut off the old propeller-driven engines and see if our jets work. And that's where we are right now. They're scared stiff that when they cut off the old propeller engines the Jets won't work. So they're caught in between but I think the Dynamics Came From Within I try to trace the story of it through the late 70s through the disillusion with Brezhnev. I talked about where the idea of perestroika was first used actually by a woman sociologist named Tatiana zasloff skya, how her Memo got the Gorbachev in some of the other people that top this is all going on in the early 80s and it comes out of ferment in the 70s. In fact, I even found a memo that Gorbachev wrote is a as one of the provincial leaders in stavropol in southern Russia to the Central Committee bosses in 1978 talking about the need to loosen up the economic system and give more control to provincial leaders and take it out of the hands of the bureaucrats at the top. So I think the Dynamics are internal and and they are not primarily external next. Eric Smith is listening for you. Go ahead, please you're on the air. Where you calling from. (00:28:50) I'm calling from Luverne North Dakota. My question is in relationship to a lecture that I heard last week at the University of North Dakota. Dr. Ronald curse president of the University of myrrh at Murray, Kentucky and who was a military attache from 85 to 87 suggested a legitimate a logistical possibility for the distribution of food and products throughout Russia and the Republic's with the know-how of NATO and it in light of an article that I read in Wednesday's monitor. There is a lot of a lot of pressure from the Europeans themselves to keep Russia economically viable in order to even protect themselves. (00:29:35) Okay some comments on this. Well, I think those are two excellent questions. I think there's no question that Europeans are closer to the situation that Americans are geographically closer cycle. Physically and politically closer as we see the superpower rivalry diminish our interest begins to wane the Germans the poles the French the Italians all of them have got to worry about if there if Russia becomes a massive bed written sick economy. They're going to have to worry about people flooding out of that country into the rest of Europe and depending on them. So they're very concerned about it and we will find that the Europeans are do find that Europeans are way ahead of us in there a concerns about Russia and be their Readiness to do business. Every time I travel there. I find that the Germans the Italians the British the French are in many places that I don't find American businessman traveling they're willing to defend swedes Danes taking risks in terms of the NATO idea Distributing food of the Soviets. It's excellent. I mean, there are people who have said that if the American Air Force could deliver food to the Kurdish refugees at the end of the war with Iraq. Why can't it be done in the Soviet Union? My hunch is that we're going to see that happen this winter to particularly too far off places. Maybe not just Moscow and Leningrad but the places in eastern Siberia Western Siberia where the climate is bad. The food growing is difficult and where they're going to need food Aid we have about 15 minutes left with Hedrick Smith today and your next for a question for him. Go ahead, (00:31:01) please. Thank you. I actually have two questions. First of all, I was there I was working as a journalist for Russian youth newspaper in Petra's votes for most of 1990 and had an opportunity to interview a number of young men that were as active as saboteurs. They were taking the food off the trains and the like is there still what's changed with the situation as far as sabotage against Gorbachev from the government since that (00:31:26) time and who were these people working for they were saboteurs on behalf of whom (00:31:30) they didn't know. (00:31:31) Why were they doing it (00:31:33) that when I asked them they said that it was so they would be able to get food for themselves and what they didn't take for themselves what they were just throwing in the woods. (00:31:40) So it's somebody pay them to do it. Yes who paid (00:31:43) him in some cases? They said it was the Soviet Mafia and another Cases, they wouldn't (00:31:47) say. Yeah. Well, then there were efforts and I've heard other stories like this that there were efforts by right-wingers hardliners who were trying to undermine Gorbachev policies and the movement towards market economics and democratic reform by causing food shortages by even cutting off fuel supplies during the winter. The flow of natural gas to Moscow apartments that kind of stuff in certain regions particularly districts at Moscow were Democratic reformers had won control of the local governments. I think that kind of stuff is probably going to continue for quite a while. We're not going to see a settle situation in that country for a long time to come but with the increasing success of democratic reformers in gaining power in the major urban areas if there is international support and and international agencies either the World Bank the IMF Wars we were talking about just a moment ago the American Air Force or NATO headquarters In the distribution of food and and outside 8 there is a greater chance. First of all that it will actually get to the intended needy people who want it and need it and secondly that the democratic reform movement will get credit for having gotten it there which will strengthen the process of Reform but I do think that we've got to be careful in making sure we've had this trouble in other places. Remember the famine relief with Ethiopia. It is difficult. When you have serious famine conditions or hungers food shortage conditions to actually make sure that it gets delivered and not only saboteurs but just people who are friendly to get ahold of it if it lands in Moscow a lot of muscovites, how do you get it to the areas outside of Moscow on elsewhere? That's a problem. We need to watch it. Are you pretty confident that we have seen the last of the hardliners or might they come back might there even possibly be another coup attempt at some point. I don't think it's just a coup Bob. It's conceivable that Boris Yeltsin and some of the other people themselves might decide To get tough and take what we would call a hard line because the famine situation gets bad because their food riots or that kind of stuff you're in a very dicey economic social situation and the typical Russian reaction throughout Russian history has been to use what they call a krupke kulak affirm Fist and Iron Fist and I think in terms of the actual right-wingers in the Army and the KGB, I think they're held at Bay for a while, but were this economic situation to continue for quite a while. They might appear in a year from now. There is a movement of Russian fascism it there's an organization called Palm it which means memory it's a very right-wing very anti-semitic cell like organization that is reminiscent of the Nazis and there was a man named Vladimir zhirinovsky who ran in the Russian presidential elections of political unknown who spoke along these lines and believe it or not. He got four five percent of the vote. So there is that strange In Russian politics it is a small small minority now but is the kind of this is the kind of movement that can prey on people's dissatisfaction and either they could provoke a coup or they could provoke the people in government now to say we got to get tough. We got to impose Law and Order In order to keep things safe for people that kind of stuff. So we're not out of the woods. I don't think a Communist dictatorship of the old style is likely to come back but a tough hand some kind of Soviet strong-arm tactics and that's soviet/russian strong-arm tactics. I think you can't excluded entirely. Let's go back to the phones here. Another question Hedrick Smith is listening for you now. Go ahead, (00:35:22) please. Yes. I have a two questions. The first one is fairly straightforward in writing a letter to Leningrad. What is the proper way to address? It? Would it be st. Petersburg? (00:35:35) Yes you st. Petersburg. And then but the main thing is if you have the right postal code, you'll get through. (00:35:41) Okay and what I put USSR on (00:35:43) still yes, I would put USSR and still. If you want to put cccp on and that will work because that's USSR in Cyrillic letters. (00:35:52) Yes, and also I'm a specialist in a medieval harp and I have an invitation from a member of the Leningrad harp quartet To performed to a concert at the Academy capella in Leningrad and that they would take care of hotel and expenses. Well there is there some sort of foundation or how would I go about getting airfare to do this? It would have to be transportation for my heart's as well. (00:36:25) Well in the first place, it sounds like a wonderful invitation. There is an organization in New York called the citizens exchange core the citizens exchange core. They're helpful with with helping people get their whether or not they'd help you underwrite the cost. I don't know. There's another organization in San Francisco called the center for u.s. U.s. Is our initiatives. They help with a good deal of cultural and more importantly at the moment or at least in terms of volume not more importantly in terms of value with the with business exchanges and so forth and I know that the woman who runs that organization Sharon Tennyson Tean is au n-- has many many contacts with foundations and is extremely helpful on exchanges. She might be able to give you a hand. I can't specifically give you guidance. That's that's just not something I specialize in but both those organizations could be helpful to you. Let me follow up on this is in a general sort of way. Would you recommend that people who are interested in just touring just traveling vacationing on visit the Soviet Union? Oh, absolutely what you used to call the Soviet. Yeah, absolutely and and their citizens exchange course as a particularly good organization. If you don't want to go as an ordinary tourist, what they tend to do is take groups of doctors and they take him to medical facilities and let them eat with Soviet doctors. They take groups of environmental people with environmental interests, and they meet with their counterparts is they've got a very extensive program they now Of a program in which I believe they're 25 American universities which are paired with 25 Soviet universities. They go in field after field and they pair people of like mind and interest so that when you go you're seeing something about a Walk of Life that you understand rather well and you tend to they organize homestays and that kind of stuff so that the kind of experience that you have is is much much more interesting and deeper and more personal than normal touring but even the normal touring is interesting and by the way winter is not a bad time to go. It's very cold, but you all appear used to that we and the nice thing is that the Bolshoi ballet and the moiseyev dance troupe and all those other great Soviet cultural organizations that are often on tour during most of the year are usually at home right around Christmas and New Year's and shortly thereafter entertaining the Russians in Moscow. So it's a good time to go East all's I have a good time at that time of year in Moscow. We have time for a couple more questions here and it's your turn now. Hello Hedrick Smith is (00:38:43) listening haven't heard the whole program, but What about a convertible Ruble isn't that big hang-up as far as International Trade (00:38:55) sure. It's a big hang-up, but what's interesting is it hangs up Americans a lot more than it hangs up most other people. As I said Germans fins swedes British Italians. People are setting up factories. It hasn't held up McDonald's. It hasn't held up Chevron. There's no question the question. There's no question that it's a problem getting your earnings out of the Soviet Union if you want to do business over there, but you can take earnings out in the form of highs or oil or gold or or there are some Goods that they manufacture though. Not a lot that are usable elsewhere. Eventually. They're going to have to go to the convertible Ruble but there are a lot of people who are using the issue of the convertible Ruble not to get involved and all I can tell you. Is there more of those in America than there are in other countries that we may wind up waking up ten years from now when they finally convert the ruble and discover that the Japanese and the Germans Is another people that got great big chunks of that market and we don't have much of it. Hmm Hedrick Smith is with us. His book is the new Russians updated to include the failed coup. Last August. Let's see if we can cover a couple of other topics during the few minutes we have remaining one is the relationship between Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev. What's it like do they get along to they hate each other? Well they get along about as well as Teddy Kennedy and Jimmy Carter got along was that right? Yeah. They're okay. They're good buddies that to puts a good perspective on. Yeah. They're they're actually capable of working together and they are I believe working together now, but they're radically different personalities. It's fascinating. I went to the hometowns of both of them. I went down to stavropol in southern Russia. The region were Gorbachev was born and brought up more. He was a political leader for a long time even went down to prove all know the village where he was born and talk to his school teachers and some of his former classmates and so forth and then I went out to spread law school, which is in the Ural Mountains, where you Some grew up in was a political leader and the stories they tell about these people as young man, even as boys illustrates what they're like today. I mean if you'd been a psychologist you could have been almost predicted some of the things that happened there both terribly bright terribly energetic Dynamic. I've met them both you feel the electricity when you're in there and their immediate Entourage standing there talking to the patella to Gorbachev sighs just you know, bore right through you and yeltsin's about the about the same else is a big guy. I'm 6 2 and 1/2 and Yeltsin. I stand toe-to-toe right through each other Gorbachev was a good deal shorter than that. But Gorbachev was a not only a good student in political leader in head of the komsomol and his school all kind of stuff but it's interesting that when people look at him as a media politician. He loved to be on the stage. He was an actor and played the main roles in some of the classic Russian dramas when he was in high school and he was quite a romancer with some of his former girlfriend say he loved what they called pull it boy political battles the political Baiting and so forth. So a lot of the stuff that you now see and Gorbachev is a public figure sort of was there Yeltsin as a kid was not only a top student and so forth, but he was a prankster pulled all kinds of pranks. He got into all kinds of scrapes and troubles. He was a kind of a bull in the china shop in them even back. Then there's one one moment in his life that to me is terribly revealing when he was 13. He was born they were both born in 1931. So this is 1944 still under Stalin during the war time. He was at the graduation ceremony for his grade school class having finished sixth grade, and he asked to speak unscheduled asked to speak and they let him speak assuming that you have nice things to say about the teachers. He did he got up and he said a few nice things about the teachers and then he launched into attack against one teacher whom he said was terrible. She humiliated the other students. She made them feel terrible. She psychologically browbeat them. She would Didn't teach them she didn't bring them along. She didn't nurture them. She didn't help them grow. She was a bad model. She even made them go out and and and go to her apartment clean up her apartment do chores for her go round and scavenge food for her dog and so forth and he thought she was terrible and she should be fired. Well, that was an uproar they had to cut short the graduation ceremony. They denied Yeltsin his diploma and he went home and his father got the strap out and was about to whip him. He used to whip him as a boy and and Boris nikolayevich young borya said papa papa. I'm right. She's terrible. Don't do this. I'm going to make a protest. He filed a formal protest as a thirteen-year-old kid. It went up through the ranks to the higher educational authorities. They investigated it took about a year and they decided he was right. This was a terrible teacher. They fired the teacher they gave him the diploma, but they left them a bad Mark for bad behavior. That's the Boris Yeltsin protesting against social justice speaking up for the rights of the ordinary people not being Timid dated by the regime daring to confront authorities the same Boris Yeltsin who stood on the tanks in August. I mean, you know, you can see them coming along and that's one reason why they don't get along. I mean they're they're did there's a different chemistry and also Gorbachev fired Yeltsin humiliated him and I think Yeltsin ever since his kind of wanted to get even we saw a bit of that after the coup and that kind of humiliation public humiliation and hectoring that he gave Gorbachev on television. We have just a couple of minutes left. Let me ask you one final one final thing here before you leave Hedrick Smith is with us here you talk about the average person in the Soviet in what used to be the Soviet Union. What do they think of all this? Do? They have the patience to put up with with the food shortages with the with the bad economy and all that. Well, the average Russian is a heck of a lot more patient than the average American they endure an awful lot more and we've got to remember that America went through 12 years of depression from 1929 to 1941 and only World War II pulled us out of it. So people are able to endure an awful lot that This assume they won't endure but things have gotten pretty bad and you see food shortages and shortages of sugar or soap or bread or whatever. I think you're going to see some demonstrations in the streets. You've already begun to see them and I think it's going to carry on people want to see some evidence of improvement in their daily lives. And when you say they're going to put up with it the answer is when it gets a cute over a short term period And there's something that they regard as an injustice particularly when it comes to food, they will demonstrate on the spot at the moment, but I don't think they're likely to build massive movements on that at the moment yet, but it's dangerous. It is not a it's not a stable situation. They will endure they will put up with an awful lot more than we will put up with but there are limits Beyond which they won't go bread is the item that really sends Russians into the street bread and sugar and those are things that they just regard ought to be there. They'll accept rationing. They simply will not accept the Heads of those things entirely and so that's something that that Yeltsin and Company now have to contend with hmm. Well Hedrick Smith. Thanks so much for coming in been very interesting Bob. It was a pleasure for me and I love taking the questions and hearing from your people great Hedrick Smith. You can read more of the kinds of stories that he's told about today is new book. The new Russians has been updated to include information on the failed coup last August in the Soviet Union.