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.