ABSTRACT
This report provides background information on economic, social and demographic conditions in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. In the interest of covering the widest possible array of topics, 1 we have gathered most data from as far back as the late Gorbachev period and updated, where appropriate and practicable, through August 1992. We also have tried to describe some of the historical forces producing trends in the data. Thus, this document serves as something of a current situation fact book and primer, but it makes no pretense to being an up-to-the-minute intelligence briefing.
