Whatever the whole meaning and effect of the change in Russia's Government may be, the scheme is consistent with Joseph Stalin's own theories. As early as 1913, when he was an obscure, anti-Czarist underground worker, he wrote: "The only real solution is regional autonomy."
In 1920, as a rising young Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin declared: "Soviet autonomy is not a rigid thing fixed once and for all time; it permits of the most varied forms . . . from narrow administrative autonomy . . . to the supreme form of autonomycontractual relations. . . . This elasticity makes it possible to...