Economic Collapse

College Park. -- When Ukrainians voted for independence from the dying Soviet Union three years ago, they told each other they could stand a diet of potatoes, or even potato skins, if it were the price of freedom.But the future was not necessarily grim. Western experts considered Ukraine a better bet for success than most of the Soviet successor states. The economy was, by Soviet standards, developed, and by exporting grain and metallurgical products, Ukraine was considered likely to be able to pay for its energy imports.

ODESSA, Ukraine -- If the potent forces of frustrated nationalism, economic distress and political division continue unchecked in Ukraine, what happened here April 10 could someday be remembered as the Fort Sumter of the Black Sea War.Late that day, Ukrainian airborne commandos stormed the small Russian-controlled navy base here, ousted Russian officers' families from their homes at gunpoint, ransacked their apartments and took control of the base....

Chicago -- No ONE who reads the papers needs to be reminded that we face a future of ethnic and tribal wars and the disintegration of one stable nation-state after another. No one has to be reminded that those fearsome wraiths followed immediately upon the collapse of communism.But I have done on-the-spot coverage of most of these new "little wars" -- from Lebanon to Yugoslavia to Azerbaijan -- and what troubles me deeply is that the predominant analyses of their causes are so flawed that our responses to them so far also have been fatally flawed.

MOSCOW -- A direct and confident President Boris N. Yeltsin called on Russians yesterday to reflect on just how wrong the pessimists have been about the last few years.Speaking on Russia's newest holiday -- the commemoration of the declaration of sovereignty within what was then the Soviet Union, in 1990 -- Mr. Yeltsin reminded his listeners how hopeless things seemed at the time, and how much they have changed since then.In 1990, he pointed out, people were even debating whether a transformation of Russia was possible.