I am very pleased and very honored to be a participant in this discussion. In order to understand the situation in the former Soviet Union, we must first realize that there were many backward areas that never fulfilled their Five Year Plans, yet which coexisted with areas that developed much more rapidly. To understand this fact is to look into the future of the successor states. It points to factors that will influence why some states will have constitutions and why these constitutions will often be quite similar if we speak about the future of their political systems.