First of all, is it true that the issue Professor Salitan talked about—that of indigenous rights of self-determination versus individual rights (sometimes called indigenous versus human rights, but I think this is a mistake in terminology)—is being exploited by centrists against the movements for independence?

With regard to the two legal approaches, I would say that such an awareness exists. There used to be a fundamental difference in approaches because everything that was not allowed was forbidden. The evolution of current legislation leads us to the second model. For instance, the new economic laws are based on the other concept: everything that is not expressly prohibited is permitted.

I would like to discuss the subject of the ethnic dimension of cadre policies. The basis of cadre policy came from Stalin, and the Stalinist approach to cadres remains basically unchanged. True, this approach may not be working in some areas of the Soviet Union today; still, the basic approach has never been changed.

Last year's conference ended with a general sense that national minority movements, still somewhat embryonic at the time, were seizing the initiative. This session opens with the consensus that these embryonic movements are far more mature, have aggressively taken center stage, and, in various degrees, have mounted a direct challenge to the center.

Last year I was accused of being a kazennyi optimist for having reflected the view of the administrations of various academic institutes in the Soviet Union. Today, I am happy to start with the words of my Viennese grandmother, “Ich sehe schwarz.” But as I am sitting next to the Institute's professional doomsayer, Professor Motyl, I will still look somewhat optimistic, I am sure.

My argument is that one can determine the kinds of conflicts that are likely to occur by looking at the way in which ethnic groups are placed within the work force. There is a large literature on ethnic competition that suggests that conflict is probable when groups come to compete in the same labor, housing, marriage, or other kinds of markets. This literature indicates that four conditions facilitate ethnic conflict.

As elsewhere in the world, most societal problems in the USSR, including nationalism, have a demographic and geographic dimension. My purpose today is to investigate some of the more prominent changes in the ethnic composition of the USSR that occurred between 1979 and 1989. The effect of changing ethnic composition depends on the geographic scale because overall changes have less effect than regional changes. Thus, I will consider various geographic scales of analysis.

Today the Latvian Supreme Soviet adopted the same sort of declaration that was made by the Estonian Supreme Soviet. The Latvian declaration is somewhat different from the Lithuanian one. I will try to give you a view of the different situations in the republics, as well as to address the question of why the declarations have been a bit different and how things may possibly evolve.

Perhaps mine is a strictly emotional opposition to the apocalyptic mood of our workshop. When everybody is a pessimist, I am tempted to be an optimist and vice-versa. I was an extreme pessimist last year when you all enjoyed perestroika and predicted nice things.

I would like to thank you for this invitation. I share Professor Sadomskaya's views about the revolution that is definitely going on in the Soviet Union. But I would like to mention that revolutions are not accomplished overnight. Usually, they are a long and painful process. Perhaps there can be an overnight revolution in politics or in economics, but not in the minds of people.

Gorbachev, like every Party general secretary before him, tried to maintain a centrist position, while the whole spectrum was moving toward reform. At some point, however, the centrist position became narrower and narrower while, as we saw in the last elections, the democratic process came to encompass about two-thirds of the population in the large cities. Reactionary forces, from monarchists to Stalinists, comprise about 10 percent. But lately Gorbachev seems to be reaching toward those reactionary forces for many things. The appointments to the Presidential Council, the shift in tone in the newspapers, all the stories about the republics' owing so much to the Soviet Union, the territorial demands—they are a small, but growing number of indicators portending a shift to a more conservative position. We do not know whether this shift is due to army pressure or to his fear of becoming an apprentice sorcerer who has created forces he can no longer control. I should add that the Communist ideology is losing ground every day, and there is danger of its being replaced with a chauvinist Russian ideology, a kind of national socialist ideology. If I had to choose between the Communists and the National Socialists, I would choose the Communists. At least they offer equal oppression for everybody instead of unequal oppression for selected peoples. These developments lead to the extremely dangerous idea of holding the empire at all costs. Gorbachev has the chance to become the Soviet Union's de Gaulle. For the time being, however, de Gaulle's mantle is still beyond his reach.