Latest Developments

NEW CONSTITUTION: The Russian Federation drafted a new constitution that proposes a Western-style balance of executive, legislative and judicial powers. It would also resurrect the Duma, Russia’s first national Parliament, which functioned between 1905 and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

SOLZHENITSYN CLEARED: Chief Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Trubin officially closed the 1974 treason case against writer Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, saying that he had found “no proof whatsoever testifying to any crime committed.” In Vermont, the Nobel laureate said that he will return to the homeland that expelled him but did not set a date.

OPPONENTS DETAINED: Three Georgian opposition leaders were detained, and crowds angry at President Zviad Gamsakhurdia forced government-controlled television and radio off the air. Gamsakhurdia reportedly ordered Georgy Chanturia, head of the National Democratic Party; his wife, Irina Sarashvili, and Vakthang Talahadze, another National Democratic Party leader, to be taken off a plane bound for Moscow and returned to Tbilisi.

PLOTTERS’ RIGHTS: Lawyers of the men arrested for attempting to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev claimed that their telephones have been tapped, their attempts to gather evidence thwarted and their clients’ basic human rights denied.

IMF COMPLAINT: U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady said the International Monetary Fund is being too slow to send economic advisers to the Soviet Union, blaming it on “bureaucratic inertia.”