^^^^^ CB: As the revolution turned out not to be irreversible, maybe the counterrevolution is not irreversible ( as they say in the antidisestablishmentarian party)
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The Balts would never go for reunification with Russia, nor would Western Ukrainians. People in Belarus, Eastern Ukraine, and the Georgian separatist regions would love to unite with Russia. My guess is that most Armenians, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs would be in favor of it too, at least in Northern Kazakhstan. I read recently that 90% of people in Tajikstan believe that the USSR should be restored "in some form." Objectively speaking it would be in everybody's economic interests to reunify in a form more effective than the CIS (which was developed in part as a possible means for reunification, by the way -- Yeltsin didn't let the other republics go/kick them out because of conviction that the USSR must not exist; it was to get rid of Gorby, with the tacit understanding that "we can always reform it again if we want to.")
The big problem here is the size deferential and itt means for the status of local powers. Let's take the Russia-Belarussian Union, which has been stalled for years even though everybody is in favor of in principle. Why? Lukashenko insists that Belarus and Russia would join as equal partners, like in the EU (and that he would be vice-president of the merged Union-State). Russians look at the relative sizes of the economy, note the fact that they subsidize Belarus' economy, and say "no way, you are coming in as just another Russian administrative district."
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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