Few living Russians speak with greater authority on their country's prospects, and few have Solzhenitsyn's genius for provoking a creative debate. Steeped as he is in Russia's history, he here interrogates the past, and assesses the mistakes of the past, in order to suggest lessons for the shaping of Russia at a crucial moment in its history. Although one school of thought among Russian intellectuals proposes an expansion of the nation's borders and a return to hegemony, Solzhenitsyn argues that the nation's future identity and security, indeed its regeneration, lie in an inner development within a Slavic nucleus, which he identifies as Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan. Any foreigner who wishes to know more about the debate within Russia on its identity and meaning in a post-Soviet future will do well to start with this position paper by one of the country's greatest writers and men of vision.