Considering the importance of the transformations now occurring in the Soviet Union, Centro de Estudios Públicos again organized two round tables in April of this year to analyze, this time, the issue of nationalities and the "denationalization" processes that are taking place in that country. In the first, which is reproduced below, the problem was discussed of the different peoples comprising the Soviet Union and the political and economic projections of the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire. The central arguments of Professor Lvin, a researcher for the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences, are transcribed as well as the comments and questions of Julio Retamal Favereau, Arturo Fontaine Talavera and David Gallagher.