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But there will be strong pressures driving the center and the republics toward compromise. Neither seems able to overcome the other economically; the republics can probably no more get the managers of state enterprises to obey their commands than Gorbachev can enforce his decrees. Yeltsin and his aides proclaim continued readiness to join Gorbachev in some kind of coalition government of "national trust" to guide the Union through the wrenching transition to a market economy. The Yeltsinites insist, however, that any coalition must drop Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. So far, Gorbachev has shown no disposition to dump him.
The one outcome that seems least likely is a return to the highly centralized totalitarian dictatorship of the past. Whatever happens at the Revolution Day celebrations, Yeltsin and his allies are pushing a new Russian Revolution, one that could remake the country almost as completely as, and hopefully more happily than, did the one 73 years ago.