Yet one paramount danger that remains lies in the disproportionate size of the Russian Republic, with its 147 million population against the less than 10 million of most other republics.
This is the kind of disbalance which enabled Prussia to unite and dominate Germany under Bismarck and which led to two world wars, just as other such unities in Britain, France and Italy prompted these countries to policies of imperial expansion and their inevitable outcome in monster wars.
If peace is to prevail among the newly liberated peoples of the Russian Empire it is imperative that the first rule of peaceful coexistence should be observed: that no single nation should be so large as to enable it to dominate the others.
The Russian Republic stretches from Eastern Europe to the Pacific. In ethnic terms it is an imperial power rather than a nation, and it will be a test of their democratic sincerity to see how they will resolve this problem in accordance with the wishes of the many nationalities in the republic.
Similar principles of division need to be applied to the other giant republics of Uzbekistan (20.3m), Kazakshstan (16m) and the Ukraine (51.7m). Nor need we concern ourselves with questions of the economic viability of small units. The Baltic nations were a byword for prosperity and peacefulness before the communist take-over; and just as the really wealthy countries of Asia - Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea - are the smallest, so in Europe it is the minuscule nations such as the Scandinavians, which are amongst the most prosperous. When will we learn that smallness is not a bar to prosperity but a condition for it?
John Papworth, Fourth World Review, 24 Abercorn Place, London NW8 9XP (tel 071 286 4366). Subscriptions to the Fourth World Review cost L10.