An excellent and experienced set of authors who, beyond the editors, include Ronald Suny, Leokadia Drobizheva and Galina Starovoiteva, tackle the question of what nationalism was in the fading Soviet system and from where it had come. Much of their answer has to do with the perverse effects of the original Soviet solution, which ultimately created the problem it was intended to master, and with the equally unanticipated and contrary consequences of Gorbachev's efforts to improve on the existing system.