well what is your view do you consider the Soviet Union a threat
i don't know that it's so much a military
threat anymore as a
well you know it's it's it's real confusing right now to know what kind of a of of a threat it is i guess it it takes awhile to to get used to something
sure
you know if if they have completely changed the place has completely turned that much around to where they're not you know not what they used to be uh
right
it's it's hard to to know anymore if it's uh a threat one way or another because
uh it used to be so so much in the past that whatever the top said the rest fell you know rank and file in behind it
um-hum
and now that with Gorbachev is introducing more i guess freedoms or expressions of freedom it doesn't look as though
you know everybody's following the same pattern and uh the the people who are you know the staunch military conservative people you never know well Gorbachev's future is like whereas whereas in the past it was seen as you know whoever was
yeah
yeah
the head of uh the communist party was seen as you know untouchable
yeah i think you know the the thing that keeps happening is happening so fast and so uh dramatic that you almost think now wait a minute you know we're getting uh sucked into something here you know if if somebody's about to
um-hum
to clobber you the first thing they do is sort of say well you know we're we're ashamed we're not going to do that anymore and uh
yeah exactly
um you know i'd i'd like to think that that isn't true but uh i i you know the evidence is that
uh you know he's he's let some some stuff go you know the east German situation it's just the whole thing is so incomprehensible you know if i'd have been asleep for five years and read it in a book i'd say no no no that didn't couldn't have happened that way
right
right well it it's amazing just because of the drain it's been on you know both economies that our economy is of course been able to uh withstand that a little better
um-hum
but uh the Russian economy they you know they i don't know what the percentage is but i heard it one time it's just some ungodly number just to support the military machine
um-hum um-hum
and finally you know who knows maybe they're finally waking up and saying you know we can't afford this
uh the US isn't the threat that we've always made them out to be you know even if they're saying that beneath the doors
um-hum
but it's hard to think that just one person can bring that much of a radical change in that short of period even if it is you know the best thing in the long run it just steps on too many people's toes who are comfortable with the way the situation is
yeah
yeah
yeah i i think you know what i'd have to i i guess i guess to answer the question directly i'm still just a a little bit
you know leery of the whole thing what i haven't seen is the uh you know a great stepping back in the military situation you know it's it's one thing you know to let us go ahead and
um-hum
right
sort of disarm and you know i even had a thought once that the whole Iraqi thing might've been just a a deal to go ahead and let us uh you know expend some
expend
some military hardware of course it didn't turn out that way and uh uh that that may have been a a a kind of far out way of thinking about it i don't know
uh-huh
well it's interesting anymore the world's getting so small that it doesn't seem to tolerate anymore any kind of the expansionism philosophy that that was here in you know twenty years ago
um-hum
yeah
uh but of course the people who have challenged that or tried to do on it have have not been world powers
so it's easier for us to say you know to an Iraq you know uh you can't do this get back you know or we're going to force you whereas you know if the Soviet Union would've
i don't know
yeah or or we can do something about it yeah
who knows what taking over Mongolia or or something like that who is really will we've been more just rhetoric uh rather than going in there officially uh or you know physically and try to to remove them
um-hum
yeah
well the the China situation you know the when it looked like that thing was was turning around and then all of the sudden it was like somebody in the
in uh Red Square or wherever said okay and that's enough and the tanks came in and you know pretty much took care of that and
uh-huh
exactly
yeah uh that
personally i don't see as Gorbachev as being maybe a threat and i think he's actually honestly trying to do some change
um-hum
but i don't believe that he in this first pass around you know being the first one to really turn things around or attempt to is going to be allowed to get away with it either
yeah well this would be like if somebody was elected president of the United States and suddenly took off toward you know just some some pretty hard by the socialism and uh
um-hum
you know the the reaction
you know the the economic well the uh the social structure of the Soviet Union you know it it's it's coming apart at the seams
uh-huh
you know and i've heard people say well you know it's just like the American Civil War will there be a union or not well no it's not the same sort of a thing at all because that
the whole Soviet system was put together under total force you know there was no
as as we are seeing now with a lot of those areas wanting out of it you know they uh nobody voted you know a lot man those people didn't vote to become part of the Soviet Union they had no choice
right
um-hum
yeah that was always kind of interesting people you know a lot of my friends have a taken the stance of you know these people are just trying to be free and trying to get away and i'm thinking more of it from a nationalistic you know if i'm
a Soviet and if part of you know south let's say South Dakota wanted to succeed you know succeed
am i going to stand for that now i realize that the origins are are different and that we all joined under a common direction and a common bond to begin with
yeah
um-hum
uh and that they may have been forced i'm not that familiar with their future but i you know i it's easy to believe that they were probably more forced into a pact than uh a volunteer or willingness to join but
yeah there there was uh the whole thing was put together
you know by force there's there's no no real question about that and some of the countries that were forced in at the later dates is the three Baltic countries you know came in in the forties
um-hum
um-hum
and uh it's well it's not that they came in it's they were conquered by the Germans and then the Russians even took it back from the Germans and never bothered to give it back you know so that's a a little different situation
and then just never given back
yeah
well that whole uh the whole idea idea if you look at the Russian history and i guess all countries the way it used to be is the only way to truly protect your borders was to have a buffer
um-hum
and that was the whole idea of why they had so many buffers and maybe you know more and more people are seeing or countries hopefully are seeing that
that buffer isn't going to help you you can like i guess like with uh Israel is a perfect example the reason they have the Angolan Heights and the
yeah
the uh all their buffer area is between Jordan and uh the Sinai and and Lebanon was just as a buffer but you know as you can see with the the scuds go right over there
um-hum yeah they don't really pay a whole lot of attention to buffers
yeah there's there's very little that that buys you anymore in today's technology
i knew a lot of guys in the service when they were sent to Germany that said that's the safest place in the world because if a war starts all the bombs are going to go right over Germany and they're going to land in other places you know that's going to be the safest place to be yeah
that's probably very true very that's very interesting never thought of that
yeah yeah well uh i i guess
what they'd have to do to uh
i really don't know you know in in the uh in you know i hope that what's happening is exactly the way it appears you know some reason or other
um-hum
you know is is uh it's kind of a strange thing we've been trying to make something like this happen for so long that when it finally happens you say whoa wait a minute you know what's uh what's what's really happening here
nobody knows to do
is it real
uh-huh
but you wonder how well this thing Boris who was it Boris Yeltsin the guy that's running the uh or evidently was elected president of the Soviet for the Russian republic which is i guess the
right exactly
uh the biggest
i get confused between all the which is the Soviet provinces versus what are the the Russian provinces versus what are
um-hum
well in the center but you got uh the the great big area that's just was traditionally known as Russia
and then all these little nationality groups around it you know that were you know was there nineteen of them or or whatever you know and these were all the Soviet autonomists
um-hum
you know they had some real fancy names for them a matter of fact when the uh
right
yeah what i read when the uh the uh United Nations was setup in in San Francisco one of the first things the Russians wanted to do was bring in each one of the uh
of these
you know republics as a separate country you know so there'd be there'd be nineteen rather than one
oh as a as a vote
sure sure
and uh the United States said well that'd mean we get to bring in forty eight you know and uh that sort of you know they backed down on that
died down on that i thought it was interesting that recently here the Warsaw Pact no longer exists as a militory military force but it's merely an economic now
yeah well i wonder if that whether uh whether whether get shot by something that's called uh an economic force or whether it's called a military pact you know it's all you can change the name of something but i wonder if it's still
well yeah i mean at yeah exactly
exists although i've seen some evidence that you know the uh the Russian soldiers
um-hum
well the funny thing there is they're not particularly welcome back home because there's they're having a housing shortages now what do you do with all these
troops that have been taken care of by uh Bulgaria and and Czechoslovakia and now all of a sudden they're going home and somebody's got to pay for their
exactly and and all the
well that's what they're saying the whole problem you know with if we were to demilitarize Europe what are we going to do with all the soldiers over there
yeah well that's not
what's going to happen to the economies that are no longer have uh a million plus people in the industry you know in each country from the US
yeah
