Mandelbaum and his five co-authors provide a handy and timely set of essays anticipating the problems raised for the West by a disintegrating Soviet Union. Because it was written originally for a conference held in October 1990, the policy agenda sketched for the West is preliminary and somewhat superficial. Because it was written by able people, three of whom, Jeremy Azrael, Alexander Motyl and Ronald Suny, have a deep understanding of the national issue in the Soviet Union, they offer a firm, self-confident prediction of what would happen and, in general terms, why.