To great numbers of erstwhile Soviet citizens the Union is beyond salvation. No amount of patching can reform the Union politically. Proof of impending disunion is everywhere: the plebiscite of March 17, 1991, was boycotted by six republics formally, and millions refused to vote individually, even when members of local authorities agreed formally with the federal Parliament to participate as a group in the plebiscite.

Clearly, what we have in the Soviet Union is a condition of continuity and change. We have radicals who see the Communist Party as an overwhelmingly dominant force, even omnipotent. We have former Communists, like Yeltsin, decrying the Communist Party as an “enemy within” to be overcome. At the same time, Yeltsin has recently joined with Gorbachev because he sees other enemies even more powerful. On the other hand, we have conservatives who have taken the place of reformers (at Gorbachev's initiative) at the Center, who, as they have regained power and influence at the Center, have become not appeased, but increasingly dissatisfied; who have decried what they feel is the loss of power by the Communist Party; who have denounced Gorbachev's leadership virulently. And yet, they too, at the last minute, decided to make common cause and refused to accept his resignation, even though many of them, like the radicals, had called for just that. What is going on? Is the Party integrating the system or not?

If the years 1988–1990 showed Gorbachev the difficul ties of governing a federation of republics whose titular majorities relentlessly strove for greater autonomy, even independence, then the last twelve months demonstrated to him the complexities of managing a federation of multiethnic republics (Appendix 3) whose minorities were no less determined to gain their share of self-rule and to pursue their particular interests. The signs of a potentially destabilizing problem were visible already prior to last April: the June 1989 incident in the Fergana valley in which Meskhetians were attacked by Uzbeks, and the long-smoldering Nagorno-Karabakh affair pitting an Armenian minority against the Azerbaijani majority. These are but two examples of bitter and violent interethnic strife percolating just beneath the surface of multiethnic societies throughout the Soviet Union.

Two main concepts of a new Union and its genesis emerged in 1990–1991. Gorbachev conceived of a close-bound “vertical” federation, such as depicted in the draft Union treaty published March, 9, 1991, to be produced under the leadership of the Center, in consultation with the republics. The nationalist opposition in the nine prospective states of the new Union conceived of a decentralized confederation emerging out of a “horizontal” compact among equals. The two approaches involved clashing concepts of the right of self-determination as to both process and substance.

Basically this question comes down to asking: Will the economy or the economic situation be of any help in salvaging the Union? Along the way to answering that, I want to address the question of what is the relationship between economic reform and republican integration from the perspective of the Center and from the perspective of economics.

Please bear with a specialist in international relations commenting on a series of presentations in comparative politics and economics. I will first try to identify a set of issues that arise from the presentations, and then I will spend a few minutes giving some of my own reflections on those issues.

I shall look at language legislation passed in the republics. The subject is not as dramatic as the actions of the Black Berets. It is not as obvious as empty shelves or economic crisis, but it is interesting because language legislation can effect all people in their everyday lives. It is also interesting because the Center has left language laws largely in the hands of the republics. So here is an area in which the republics are beginning to act as independent agents. And whether or not they become independent, they will have to grapple with language as a significant policy issue.

Republican reforms are an interesting topic, especially for those of us who have despaired of the prospect for any real market reforms by the central government. The last year has provided a ray of hope. The governments in the Baltics, Armenia, the RSFSR, and later Kazakhstan, all announced plans for privatization and the creation of a market system that extended well beyond those of the central government. Whereas central initiatives—there now appear to be far too many to name—over the last two years appeared to be halting and indecisive, the vitality of the republic sovereignty campaigns suggests that economic transformation has much better prospects at the grass-roots. We all know some of the evidence that exists for this: the fact that, in the Baltics for example, the rate of formation of cooperatives has been much higher, almost twice as high as the average for the rest of the Soviet Union; that in Estonia, the percentage of joint ventures far outweighs the share of Estonia's contribution to the Soviet GNP, and so on. We know that the RSFSR went ahead and adopted the 500-day plan, or at least announced that it was doing so, even after the Shatalin plan was rejected at the national level.

One of the major problems facing independence movements in the USSR is that significant and increasing numbers of people reside outside their national homelands and, therefore, are considered aliens in the national homelands of others. The ancestral homeland is intimately enmeshed with nationalism, and the deep emotional attachment to and the sense of exclusive ownership of the sacred soil of the homeland should not be underestimated. Most ethnic conflict involves alien in-migration or disputes over the control of the homeland. Significant numbers of nonindigenous groups within the national homelands undermine the nation's exclusive claim to the homeland, dilute the national homogeneity of the homeland, and increase interethnic interaction within the homeland. Thus, throughout the world, nations strive to maximize national homogeneity within their homelands, and migration that results in alien incursions into the national homeland is viewed with alarm and frequently results in violence. In the Baltic republics, for example, alien in-migration is of intense public and political concern and is frequently cited as a major justification for political independence. Differential natural increase among the nationalities in a homeland is also a vital concern when it significantly affects the ethnic composition of a homeland. Assimilation through intermarriage is another development frequently viewed as a threat to national homogeneity, although in the Soviet Union offspring of intermarriage in national homeland most often identify with the indigenous nationality.

To some extent I feel as Robert Lewis does, that the process leading from “national awakening” to “national liberation” is a worldwide tendency, and that the Soviet Union is part of a global Zeitgeist in this respect.

Byway of illustrating this fifteen-stage process, I would like to just report on a couple of examples I came across in reading about the republics as independent actors. One such issue has to do with the attempts of the different republics, and the nations within them, to form transnational coalitions across borders. In a way, these attempts get around the problem of establishing formal diplomatic relations with other countries: maybe you do not need de jure recognition if in fact you can do things with other people. For instance, consider the anti-nuclear congress, organized in Kazakhstan by something called the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, led by the poet Olzhas Suleimenov. In early 1989, a Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan was followed by a public protest, and Suleimenov became the leader of the movement. He and his people quickly decided to call it not the “Semipalatinsk Movement” but the “Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement.” And they immediately brought in American Indians, Maoris, and other people from around the world, who are all being subjected to nuclear testing. He also established personal liaison with Dr. Bernard Lawn of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Cambridge, Massachusetts; last summer three hundred doctors and scientists in Semipalatinsk talked to people who were immediately affected by military nuclear testing.

Now Iam not concerned with definitions. Instead I would like to discuss very briefly the appearance of three organizations in Central Asia that are independent of the state. Everyone knows about the popular fronts in the Baltics; everyone has heard presentations about Ukraine, Belorussia, and Moldavia. I decided, therefore, to take the “hopeless” people, about whom one Soviet diplomat said two years ago: “They are not ready yet for democracy because they have jumped from the feudal system to the socialist system, avoiding your wonderful capitalistic stage when you created democratic institutions.” I want to demonstrate that democratic institutions were indeed created independently from the state in these Central Asian republics.

There are basically three choices as far as the future of the Union is concerned. The first is empire by force because the current federation is a federation only by label, and so, basically, a continuation of the same. The second is confederation, Yeltsin-style, based on inter-republican treaties. Confederation could have several variants. One is the Solzhenitsyn variant; the other is that everybody will get out of the Union; and the last is the nine-minus-six-scenario. The third and last alternative Soviet future is disintegration, with outside forces attracting the pieces: Muslims attracting the Muslim republics; Eastern Europe attracting the western Republics; and Scandinavia attracting the Baltic republics.

There is a tendency here to assume that the market is new, that nations have emerged anew, that civil society has suddenly come about, that all of a sudden people are speaking their native languages and going to school in their native language. I would like to argue that this is not the case at all.