Warnings About What’s to Come

Voices from the Congress of People’s Deputies:

‘We Are Laying the Basis of Our Future Today’

“The important thing is to keep the union. While it remains a union, all will be equal even if they in reality are not equal. . . . We are laying the basis of our future today. We either put endless inequality and conflicts and wars into this foundation, or we lay out normal procedures of coexistence and good-neighborliness.”

--Anatoly A. Sobchak, mayor of Leningrad

‘Separatism and Contempt’

“We no longer have any guarantee that the laws we pass will be enforced. Whatever we decide here has yet to be accepted in the republics. Separatism and contempt for any broad agreements are rife out there.”

--Anatoly Karpov, former world chess champion

‘Ending the Union’

“If necessary, the republics can make a declaration ending the union. The Kremlin will close the next day.”

--Sergei A. Tsyplyaev, Leningrad university official

‘Employ Reason’

“Everyone can see things are being rushed unnecessarily, with a heavy dose of emotion. Perhaps it would have been more correct to employ reason.”

--Georgy S. Tzarevich, chairman of commission on inter-ethnic relations, Supreme Soviet

‘Please Get It Into Your Heads’

“Americans have tremendous problems learning Russian names. It took them four years to memorize ‘Gorbachev,’ and they hate to part with it. Please get it into your heads that after Aug. 21 (when the coup failed), there is no such notion as ‘Gorbachev the leader.’ ”

--Yuri D. Chernichenko, a deputy and head of the Writers Union

‘Simply Madness’

“The chain reaction of (the) breakup of the union may swallow up the lives of millions of our compatriots. . . . It is simply madness to leave the huge territory of this vast country that used to be a single entity without common laws at such difficult times.”

--Yuri E. Burikh, chief of the technical department at Ukrainian chemical plant