For seven decades Revolution Day on Nov. 7 has been the Soviet holiday of holidays, celebrating the 1917 dawn of the Communist empire in a pageant of regimented unity. But the observances this week seem likely to symbolize something very different -- where they are held at all. Officials in Moscow and Leningrad have criticized the traditional military parades as anachronistic wastes of money; parliamentarians in Latvia want rites honoring "victims of Communist terror"; authorities in Lvov in the western Ukraine resolved to ignore the anniversary altogether. Even after Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered Moscow and other cities to hold the parades, some local leaders called for counterdemonstrations as well. No one was sure whose orders would be followed.
The cacophony over Revolution Day is only a mild symptom of the Soviet Union's potential dissolution. Perhaps this Gorbachev order will be grudgingly obeyed. But many of the edicts that he has been issuing under a law enabling him, in theory, to govern virtually by decree amount to the unheard roars of a paper tiger. In some cases the Kremlin and the republics have been playing out a ritualized farce. The center, as it is now called, issues a Gorbachev decree; one or more republics declare it to be null and void on their territory; Gorbachev issues a second order declaring that these null-and-void declarations are themselves null and void.
In the process, what was once one of the world's most tightly centralized states continues to fall apart. In the past few weeks, Kazakhstan in Central Asia became the 14th of the 15 republics to declare its sovereignty. A nationalist alliance calling itself the Round Table won 54% of the vote in parliamentary elections in the republic of Georgia on a platform that opposes signing a new treaty of union with the central government. The Ukrainian government last week began distributing coupons to be used for the purchase of various goods, a step toward introducing its own currency. The Belorussian republic recently enacted measures regulating exports to other republics or abroad, and Armenia did the same last week.
The newest fad is for even more atomization: not just republics but pieces of republics and even single cities are proclaiming themselves sovereign. Within the Russian federation, the Chuvash, Buryat, Kalmyk, Tatar, Mari, Komi, Yakut, Karelian and Bashkir autonomous republics, each the homeland of a distinct ethnic group, have all called for some form of separatism. Districts like the Irkutsk region of Siberia have adopted declarations of "equality and independence," and the city of Nizhni-Novgorod has petitioned the federation for special status.