ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union is the last of the great European empires, and the multinational origins and character of the USSR provide that state with a complicated mixture of assets and liabilities. That mixture of assets and liabilities helps to explain why, on the one hand, Moscow finds it indispensable to retain an extraordinarily tight set of domestic political controls to quash potential dissidence. The potential fragilities of Soviet nationality structure are real, but it is essential to assess accurately their relative weight within the political life of the state and not misjudge their scope, direction, outer parameters, and limitations. Since every Soviet Union republic is located on an external border, the balance between internal vulnerabilities and external opportunities shifts as one surveys that huge periphery from west to east. Turkey differs in many respects from those countries where fundamentalism has re-emerged in recent years.
