IN George Orwell's chillingly prescient novel 1984, the totalitarian state is seen as a form of organization that is assured of complete, self-perpetuating supremacy. According to Andrei Amalric, a young (31) and as yet little-known Russian writer, Orwell was way off. In a controversial essay that only recently reached the West, Amalric observes that the once monolithic Soviet state is already "distending itself and disintegrating like sour dough." Between 1980 and 1985, he predicts, it will explode in "anarchy, violence and intense national hatred."
In the Soviet intellectual world, Amalric is considered a combative gadfly. He has done time in Siberia, charged...
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