The national question and the national policy of the Kremlin have not yet been among my research interests, although I, as a national, closely followed the Soviet national political. There were two reasons here: firstly, I set out to write only about what constitutes the basis of all the disasters not only of small peoples, but also of the sovereign nation of the empire itself - about the emergence and functioning of the Soviet political system; secondly, who was interested in the fate and suffering of small peoples, except for themselves. Today the situation has changed dramatically. My own attitude towards this problem has also changed. I used to associate the collapse of the Soviet empire with the current political system in the metropolis, but now a different picture is emerging more and more clearly - the collapse of the empire will probably begin from its outskirts. From here and the Western world shows a growing interest in the fate of non-Russian peoples. I noticed this at my report on "perestroika" in Washington in November 1987 at a meeting of a group of American experts on Soviet affairs. I was asked to talk in more detail about the prospects for Gorbachev's "perestroika" in the field of national policy...