Zvezda, I'm only responding to your last post in order to rejuvenate this thread - which is probably a futile effort, all things considered. In general, I don't feel it's constructive to argue with Russian nationalists; for one thing, nationalists are such ideologues that you can predict all their arguments before they even make them.
Thus, I could respond to your post about how under the Soviets "there existed genuine friendship among all nations," by quite baldly stating that the United States and the nations of Western Europe could hardly be described as "friendly" in their attitude towards the Soviet Union - it was called the Cold War for a reason, mind you. Or, perhaps you are arguing that friendship among nationalities within the Soviet empire remained benign - But that hardly seems logical, since as we all know Stalin deported entire populations of ethnic and class minorities both before, during, and after World War II. These people were deprived of their homelands and sent off by cattle cars to unknown, often uninhabitable regions, where many of them perished for lack of adequate food and shelter. As a result, it's highly doubtful that these particular nationalities today feel anything more than total disdain for the former Soviet empire and Russians in general. Because any semblance of Soviet "friendship" between nationalities in the USSR was only established by means of force and ethnic (or class) cleansing.
But of course you will respond that these particular ethnic groups and classes (like the kulaks and other better-off peasants in the Ukraine) represented some very real threat against the Soviet state and therefore deserved to be treated like animals. But if you were to make such an argument, you would be completely contradicting yourself, because you would then be admitting that serious ethnic (and class) conflict existed within the Soviet Union even prior to the first deportations. In other words, your entire argument about the so-called friendly relations between Soviet nationalities rests on a false premise.
As for the Soviet Union self-destructing, quite obviously it did, without the need for any secret "conspiracies" against it (whether the secret conspiracists were Reagan or Yeltsin, the theory that some "evil" force destroyed the USSR is simply nonsense). As previously stated (how many times?) the entire Soviet economy had tanked by the summer of 1991. It had been tanking for decades, according to the regime's own researchers. Just one example: the Soviet Union had no native computer industry to speak of. It had earned no share in the expanding international economic market of information technology. When it came to globalization, the dear old USSR looked to be a complete and utter failure. There's no way that it could have competed with other first world nations in the remaining decade of the 20th century, much less the 21st century, unless some radical changes were made. Gorbachev understood this, as did Yeltsin.
One final thought - I'm sure economic conditions affect ethnic relations, even are at the heart of ethnic and religious conflicts - however, they cannot be considered the only cause for these conflicts. There are usually serious, historically long-standing ethnic and religious hatreds existing between such groups who suddenly (as if without warning) start attacking each other. You can argue that the Soviet empire put a lid on simmering ethnic conflicts (usually, probably always, at the point of a bayonet). You have a good argument there. What you cannot really argue is that those ethnic conflicts ever entirely went away. They didn't, and as a result they boiled over once the Soviet Union (and its secret police) disintegrated.
