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ies were carried out and also a political agenda associated with the 

 studies. I think that the kind of studies that are needed of this sort 

 may now become possible with the collapse of Communism and 

 with greater levels of interest on the part of the new Russian au- 

 thorities. 



Senator MURKOWSKI. Cooperation obviously between Russia and 

 the United States on the environment depends on stability of gov- 

 ernment, and there's always a continued concern about President 

 Yeltsin's, I won't say state of health, but the state of the political 

 situation over there. The economic situation in Russia is obviously 

 a factor in that stability. I wonder if you could give us any assess- 

 ment on the current status of that stability. Might we look forward 

 with pretty good odds to a continuation of the current government, 

 or is there still a relatively high level of risk that the bad guys in 

 the wings are ready to come out and reinstitute the regime that we 

 had previously seen prevalent in Russia? 



Director Gates. Well, I think that there's no possibility of a res- 

 toration of the previous regime or of Communism. As you suggest, 

 Russia, in particular, is undergoing severe economic hardslup. It 

 clearly has political implications. President Yeltsin has a fine line 

 to walk between going forward with political and economic reform 

 and at the same time trying to provide or to assure that people are 

 fed and that people continue to have jobs. So far he remains clearly 

 the most popular and, I would say, the most skilled politician in 

 Russia. His poll numbers have been declining over the months as 

 these economic hardships have increased and as the measures, the 

 economic reform measures, have begun to bite. But I think it's rea- 

 sonable to say that we see no imminent threat to his continuation 

 in office, and I think he still has tremendous public support. I 

 think reform continues to have substantial support. But there are 

 undoubtedly going to be some zigzags in this course as these people 

 try to do something that's virtually unprecedented in history, and 

 that is try to change their political and economic systems from a 

 1,000 year legacy of autocracy, Communism and state-directed eco- 

 nomic activity to a Western-style democracy, and market economy. 

 It's never been done before, certainly not on this scale, so I think 

 it would be unfair to Mr. Yeltsin to underestimate the challenge 

 that faces him. I think he's done a pretty remarkable job so far. 



Senator MURKOWSKI. I'm wondering, in our relationship with the 

 Russians relative to monitoring activities associated with the envi- 

 ronment, is it on the basis of a quid pro quo where they want some- 

 thing from us in order for you to get a cooperative effort on a joint 

 evaluation of a particular environmental priority? In other words, 

 if we are going to go in and evaluate sites of nuclear activity, do 

 they want some of our information as well, or are they pretty much 

 in a cooperative mode where they understand that they need our 

 help. 



Director Gates. We have, not had any exchanges with the Rus- 

 sians, among the intelligence services, on information relating to 

 nuclear waste or the kinds of environmental problems that I dis- 

 cussed in my statement. There is, in our government, a federal co- 

 ordinating council on science, engineering and technology, and 

 there is a subgroup of that that deals with environmental issues, 

 and it is in that forum that discussions with the Russians would 



