""You must tell them that there must be a new union or there will be chaos," he [Shevardnadze] implored me. That evening, when I hosted republic leaders for dinner — a mixed group of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers — I saw around the table and in the conversation a microcosm of the post-coup Soviet Union’s potential — and its problems. Whatever euphoria that they felt with their post-putsch independence declarations had given way to a marked degree of realism. "Independence sounds nice, but we have to live, and we have to be practical," observed the Prime Minister of Moldova, Valeriu Muravsky. That was the persistent theme that I heard from every one of the republic leaders, with the sole exception of the Georgian Prime Minister, Vissarion Gugushvili, though even he spoke of the need for economic cooperation once Georgian independence was recognized internationally."
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Lawyers from the United StatesUnited States federal government officialsUnited States Secretaries of StateUnited States Secretaries of the TreasuryWhite House Chiefs of Staff
Original Language: English
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Sources
The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989-1992 (1995) by James Addison Baker, p. 531
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Baker
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James Baker
James Addison Baker, III (born April 28, 1930) worked in President Ronald Reagan's administration, first as Chief of Staff from 1981 to 1985, then as Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988. After running George H.W. Bush's successful presidential campaign in 1988, Baker was appointed Secretary of State by President Bush in 1989. The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas is named after him. In 2006, he was named the Republican co-chair of the new
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