FROM A FORMAL POINT OF VIEW, the Soviet Union was a confederation of independent states rather than a federal state: in the constitution, all the Union republics were granted a right to secede. As a result of this structure, no new borders were drawn on the map when the state collapsed in 1991. Instead, what used to be the internal borders, delineating its constituent parts, were elevated to the status of international boundaries. This invested them with an incomparably greater importance, much more than they had been intended to carry. Many of them had been drawn in a rather casual manner, reflecting compromise solutions between various concerns-the ethnic distribution of the population, historical and cultural differences, economic efficiency and political expediency. Not surprisingly, in the post-Soviet debate calls have been made to change these borders. The arguments marshalled for such designs have been of different kinds. At times, the main desire has been to make the borders reflect the ethnic distribution of the former Soviet nationalities in a more accurate manner. This was, for instance, the rationale behind Solzhenitsyn's proposals to conduct oblast' referenda in Kazakhstan and Ukraine on the question of the political independence of these states.1 This idea was supported by, among others, El'tsin's former adviser on nationality questions, Galina Starovoitova, but with a somewhat different argumentation: her motivation was not a desire to create ethnically homogeneous states, but to respect the will of the population.2 At other times still, demands for border revision have been based on historical claims, such as the Estonian and Latvian campaigns for the return of some areas in the Russian Federation which were parts of these Baltic states in the interwar period.3 In these two cases the territorial pretensions are not bolstered by ethnic arguments, since the population in the disputed areas is preponderantly Russian (95-98%). Finally, some pretensions, such as the designs for the transfer of the Crimean peninsula to Russian jurisdiction, are backed by both historical and demographic arguments: the Crimea is former Russian territory, and the Russians make up the largest ethnic group in the area. The political leaderships in the Soviet successor states have vehemently rejected all border changes which might render their territories smaller. They often point to the principle of the inviolability of borders, a principle which, it is claimed, is enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. This assertion is somewhat misleading. In fact, the CSCE documents do countenance the possibility of border changes, but only if they are implemented by peaceful means and based on an agreement between the