Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from January 1993

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from January 1993

Rediscovering Russia. (Editorial)
January 1, 1993... It may seem absurd to talk of Russia as a new country, but we might as well, because most of us in the West haven't really seen Russia in our lifetime. What we've seen instead has been Russia under the cloak of communism, or Russia as part of...

The paper chase. (reaction in Washington DC to Bill Clinton's election)
January 1, 1993... At year end, Washington usually takes a holiday. The Beltway community joins the rest of the citizenry in enjoying Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas shopping 'til they drop, and watching what seems to be 24 straight hours of football games on New...

But who will run the next generation? (of nuclear power plants)
January 1, 1993... If there is going to be a second generation of commercial nuclear power reactors, will there be a new generation of engineers to run them? The Energy Department recently released figures showing a precipitous drop in the number of students...

On Clinton's calendar. (Arms Control)
January 1, 1993... Although the presidential campaign's domestic focus obscured president-elect Bill Clinton's foreign policy views, a close examination of his stump speeches suggests some continuity with the Bush administration on many arms control issues--as...

Supplier-spotting. (German firm supplied Iraq with nuclear components)
January 1, 1993... Iraqi officials finally admitted, during the fifteenth inspection visit of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in November, that they had been researching gas-centrifuge enrichment of uranium at Rashidiya, on the northern outskirts of...

PSR pinpoints problems. (Physicians for Social Responsibility's report on Energy Department's epidemiology)
January 1, 1993... As recently as 1989, it looked as if a long-standing controversy over the Energy Department's studies of the effects of radiation on human health might eventually be resolved. If all of the Energy Department's worker health records were...

Nothing in common, no wealth. (Commonwealth of Independent States)
January 1, 1993... Just as Mikhail Gorbachev predicted, the Commonwealth of Independent States is merely "a soap bubble in history." On December 8, 1991, the leaders of three Soviet republics--Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Stanislav...

Concerto for democrats with orchestra. (post-communist Russia)
January 1, 1993... After changing the flags at the White House, the Supreme Soviet stopped its democratic activities and turned back to the old regime. Many Russian intellectuals are nostalgic for the first days after the unsuccessful August 1991 coup. They...

From "nyet" to "don't know." (foreign policy in post-communist Russia)
January 1, 1993... Andrei Gromyko, the former Soviet Foreign Minister, was famous for one word: "Nyet." And for years, that word summarized Soviet foreign policy, which consisted of opposing the Western world in everything, everywhere. This position made...

Khasbulatov & co. (Russia's Supreme Soviet speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov)
January 1, 1993... The majority of Russian citizens expected a fight between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his opposition at the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, which opened on December 1, 1992. They also expected a personal struggle for power between the...

Gennadi Burbulis - the first to fall. (former Russian State Secretary)
January 1, 1993... In early 1992, State Secretary Gennadi Burbulis's long, unsmiling face and bottle-green eyes appeared ever more frequently on the TV screen and in newspaper pages. No more; in the December conflict between Yeltsin and the Congress of Peoples'...

Aleksandr Rutskoi, vice-king? (Russian Vice President )
January 1, 1993... In spring 1991, during the Third Russian Congress, one conservative deputy threw the leadership of the Communist Party into a state of shock. On behalf of 179 members of a new faction called "Communists for Democracy," he announced full...

The economy: disintegrating. (Russia)
January 1, 1993... Local governments ignore Moscow's reforms--while the old industrial directorate waits in the wings for Yeltsin's plan to fail. In June 1991--before the August coup--an important but little-noticed scientific conference took place in...

Out with the Gaidar plan? (Russia's Yegor Gaidar ousted)
January 1, 1993... A wonderful headline from the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda put it this way: "Graider is our friend, but the truth is getting more and more expensive." In December, the Congress of Peoples' Deputies seemed to agree, refusing to confirm him...

In with the Volsky plan? (Russia's Arkady Volsky)
January 1, 1993... One journalist has called him "a person who is always in the shadows." Despite his strong personality, Arkady Volsky is apparently content in the shade, with no desire to come out into the sunlight. Yet a rising tide of rumors has it that...

The KGB: "they still need us." (Russia's Ministry of Security)
January 1, 1993... The new Ministry of Security has the same powers as the old KGB; it controls the KGB archives and the fates of many individuals--including politicians. In the fall of 1991, many of my colleagues, including Americans, congratulated me on...

Suppressing a rising press. (Russia)
January 1, 1993... The new authorities, not unlike the old authorities, like to read and listen only to what they find agreeable. Almost immediately after the "great victory" of August 1991, it was clear that the new people in charge were quickly adopting...

High culture meets trash TV. (Russia)
January 1, 1993... Russian culture is undergoing a crisis. Throughout 1992, this crisis was the subject of widespread discussion in the Russian press and the center of televised debates and scholarly conferences. A prime example was the international...

Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege.
January 1, 1993... Ecocide is a fascinating but flawed book about public health and environmental pollution in the former Soviet Union. Murray Feshbach, a professor of demography at Georgetown University, and Alfred Friendly, a former Moscow bureau chief for...

The Future of Germany and the Atlantic Alliance.
January 1, 1993... This is a fascinating book--but not for its insights on the process of German unification or German foreign policy. The three chapters on German foreign policy after 1945 and its domestic context are conventional. And the two chapters dealing...

The Threat at Home: The Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military.
January 1, 1993... With the Cold War over, the nation is now confronting the tremendous environmental damage the military enterprise has wrought over the past several decades. Both the public and government officials are beginning to realize that repairing that...