ABSTRACT
There is no question that the Russian intelligentsia is giving much thought to the problems of Russian national identity, including the political issues involved in those problems. It is also clear that the non-Russians are pressing for a solution of the Russian problem by means of an institutional separation of Russia from the USSR as a prerequisite for overcoming "imperial thinking" and imperial practices in the Soviet Union. "Empire-savers" regard the present Soviet Union in its boundaries as the proper and legitimate national "space" of the Russian nation. The process of reevaluation of history has assumed sufficiently large proportions to raise the possibility of a "divorce" or secession of Russian nationalism from the Soviet state and Marxist-Leninist ideology. The Russians need to fathom the value of democracy and to see that Russia's "voluntary withdrawal from the 'large empire' of the USSR" will be beneficial to the Russian people.
