71.  The U.S.-backed plan would loosen the hold Russia has over former Soviet states, but the United States contends it will foster democracy in those emerging nations.

72.  The United States, for example, has stopped aiming its missiles at Russia and the other former Soviet states.

73.  The West has levers that it can push to help shape politics in Russia and other former Soviet states today, including influence over opposition leaders.

74.  The West is obviously worried about Russian intentions in the former Soviet states that border Eastern Europe, and is trying to shape them.

75.  This is reportedly a recurring problem for many athletes of the former Soviet states who are headed to the playing fields of America.

76.  To others, the motion was tantamount to public praise for the mass murder and social repression that was the bloody history of the Soviet state.

77.  Today, NATO expansion carries the potential to extend the same cooperation into Eastern Europe and, I hope, eventually Russia and other former Soviet states.

78.  Together with the other former Soviet states, Russia supplies one-tenth of world crude-oil exports.

79.  Within two years the Soviet states broke up.

80.  Words alone, of course, did not tear down the Berlin Wall and dissolve the Soviet state.