Bush Praises Gorbachev, Recognizes 6 Republics : Policy: He salutes resigned leader’s vision and courage and cites victory for democracy and freedom.

Moving swiftly to embrace the beginning of a new era in Russia and its neighboring republics, President Bush declared Wednesday that the Soviet Union has passed into history and announced that the United States is according full recognition to the Russian Federation and five other former Soviet republics.

“The Soviet Union itself is no more,” Bush declared in a seven-minute-long, nationally televised address, only hours after Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s resignation as Soviet president. “This is a victory for democracy and freedom.”

Bush praised the last Soviet leader for his “sustained commitment to world peace and for his intellect, vision and courage.”

“Mikhail Gorbachev’s revolutionary policies transformed the Soviet Union,” Bush said. “ . . . His legacy guarantees him an honored place in history.”

But his salute to Gorbachev, the superpower partner he once counted on to help build a “new world order,” was only a brief grace note in a speech that focused largely on the challenge of forging new bonds with the 12 post-Soviet republics.

Indeed, much of Bush’s statement appeared to be a series of pointed messages to the republics’ leaders, as well as an appeal to the American public to support U.S. assistance to the new countries.

“The United States applauds and supports the historic choice for freedom of the new states,” the President said. Despite the possibility of “chaos,” he said, “these events clearly serve our national interest.”

He singled out “the emergence of a free, independent and democratic Russia, led by its courageous President Boris Yeltsin.”

With Gorbachev gone, Yeltsin has inherited the remaining superpower trappings of the Soviet Union, including most of its nuclear arsenal.

Bush pointedly praised the new leaders’ “careful attention to nuclear control and safety during this transition”--a major concern of U.S. policy-makers.

In a move that was surprising for its speed, Bush said the United States will immediately accord full recognition to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (formerly Kirghizia) and Armenia because they have made “specific commitments” to the United States on nuclear weapons and internal reforms. Officials had said that move had not been expected until today.

The President said the United States will establish official relations with the remaining six republics--Uzbekistan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia--”when we are satisfied that they have made commitments to responsible security policies and democratic principles.”

Bush also appealed to the American people to support a policy of “engagement” toward the post-Soviet republics, despite the economic squeeze at home.

He did not specifically mention U.S. economic aid for the 12 republics, but he appeared to be laying the groundwork for an eventual aid program.

So far, Bush has offered more than $3 billion in aid to the Soviet Union--but most of the aid has been in the form of agricultural credits that the Administration has portrayed as serving primarily to help the U.S. farm economy.

“We cannot (succeed) if we retreat into isolationism,” Bush warned.

“Our enemies have become our partners,” he said. “ . . . They ask for our support, and we will give it to them. We will do it because as Americans, we will do no less.”

Bush’s statement reflected increasing political pressure on the Administration to move more quickly toward cooperation with the new republics.

An unusual bipartisan alliance in Congress, including such senior figures as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), has been urging the Administration to do more to stabilize the new republics, and especially to ensure that their nuclear weapons are brought under control.

But until Wednesday, Bush had hesitated--in part, aides said, because of painfully conflicting feelings about Gorbachev’s departure from power.

In three years of increasingly intimate political dealings, Bush and Gorbachev forged the closest partnership between U.S. and Soviet leaders in history, cooperating to cut their nuclear arsenals, end the Cold War division of Europe and resolve conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.

But Bush and his aides also recognized that Gorbachev’s power within the Soviet Union had been slipping for more than a year--and tumbling ever since an abortive military coup last August encouraged more radical reformers such as Yeltsin to assert their right to govern.

As a result, Bush has been caught for months in an awkward in-between stage, impelled by personal loyalty to stick by Gorbachev and compelled by realities to deal increasingly with Yeltsin.

“There has been a certain amount of nostalgia for Gorbachev around here,” one official said. “But we’re beginning to say, ‘Well, we’ve had five good years (dealing with Gorbachev), and we should be thankful for that.’

“By the last few days,” he added, “there was a feeling that we wished he’d get it over with and resign. It was getting to be painful, watching him hang there with his legs kicking in the air.”

Now, officials say, foreign policy will become much more complicated. In place of a single, reliable superpower partner, Bush and his aides must contend with 12 new, untested governments--some of which appear bent on conflict with each other.

Moreover, while Gorbachev made cooperation with the United States the cornerstone of his foreign policy, some of the new, more nationalistic leaders who are taking his place may be less concerned about good relations with the West--although they will still want Western aid to help revive their moribund economies.

In particular, one official noted, Bush, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James A. Baker III are still uneasy with Yeltsin, now unrivaled as the most powerful leader in the old Soviet Union. Yeltsin’s commitment to democracy, economic reform and good relations with the West are all “a little uncertain,” the official said.

As Bush noted, the United States is also concerned over who controls the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which contains an estimated 27,000 weapons. With Gorbachev’s resignation, control of the Soviet nuclear force was apparently transferred to Yeltsin. But the official said U.S. experts still aren’t sure what procedures and safeguards the Soviet armed forces are using.

Driven partly by concern over the stability of nuclear forces, Bush and Baker plan to act quickly to cement relations with the leaders of the 12 post-Soviet republics--especially the four with nuclear weapons, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Some officials had argued for earlier recognition of at least some republics. But Bush decided to wait until a day after Gorbachev’s resignation--as another gesture of respect to the fallen leader.

Bush was not always so solicitous of Gorbachev’s feelings, nor so admiring of his deeds. For his first eight months in office, Bush was openly skeptical of the Soviet leader’s sincerity. His spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, publicly dismissed Gorbachev in May, 1989, as “a drugstore cowboy”--a phony.

But Gorbachev’s actions compelled Bush to respond. In August, 1989, reformist leaders in Poland and Hungary told Bush that Gorbachev was serious about allowing democracy in Eastern Europe and urged Bush to deal with the Soviet leader. That September, Gorbachev’s foreign minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, convinced Baker that Moscow’s desire for economic reform was genuine.

The final turning point came at the first summit meeting between the two leaders, aboard a Soviet passenger ship anchored off Malta in December, 1989--a month after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. For the first time, Bush went beyond merely rhetorical support for Gorbachev’s reforms and proposed some modest U.S. actions to help the Soviet economy. The two presidents emerged from their meeting to declare the Cold War officially at an end.

After that, Bush and Gorbachev worked together, speaking often on the telephone, to midwife new arms control agreements, the reunification of Germany and the end of wars in Afghanistan, Angola and Central America. The partnership culminated last year in the Persian Gulf crisis, when Gorbachev supported Bush’s decision to take military action against Iraq--an action that became a model for what Bush declared a “new world order.”

At the same time, building on the new atmosphere of trust, the superpowers dramatically sped up efforts to cut their gigantic nuclear arsenals--to the unprecedented point, last September, of bypassing detailed negotiations and simply announcing new reductions.

Bush over time developed a genuine personal loyalty to Gorbachev. He also was sometimes criticized for it. Last winter, for example, when Gorbachev approved a military crackdown against the three secessionist Baltic republics, Bush condemned the move but also expressed support for Gorbachev’s go-slow approach to granting independence.

Bush’s loyalty led him to assert public confidence in Gorbachev’s ability to govern as recently as two months ago--at their last face-to-face meeting, the opening of the Madrid conference on the Middle East. “I sense . . . no difference, certainly from my standpoint, in the respect level for President Gorbachev,” Bush said. He added, pointedly, that if the 12 republics could agree to continue maintaining a single central government, that would “make it much easier” for Western countries to provide economic aid.