March 4, 1988 - Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski at DePauw University

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, says the internal reform underway in the Soviet Union is fundamental. The principal challenges to that reform, Brzezinski maintains, are bureaucratic, historical and "last but not least, multinational."

Speaking in a Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture as part of a three-day symposium on relations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., Brzezinski stated, "The Soviet Union is a multinational state ... Unwittingly we have accepted Soviet terminology in speaking of the Russians as a great nation, while speaking of the others as 'nationalities.' They are not merely nationalities. They are nations. The Armenians are a nation. The Georgians are a nation. The Balts -- the Estonians, the Lithuanians and Latvians -- the Ukranians and Uzbeks: all are nations with a history, with a sense of identity, with their own aspirations. And decentralizing a multinational empire is bound to summon up acute national problems, as indeed it is already beginning to do," he said.