Russians, in 2001, will be asked to stand to attention to the air of the Soviet National Anthem. The old tune, familiar from Olympic victory ceremonies, will replace the excerpt from Glinka's A life for the Tsar which has served as a temporary and wordless national anthem.
But instead of saluting "the indestructible union of free republics" and giving homage to the "party of Lenin, strength of the people", Russians will be spurred on by new words. The writer is none other than Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the original Soviet verses and whose son, Nikita, directed the Oscar-winning movie Burnt by the Sun.
The result is something that President Vladimir Putin, according to aides, approves of strongly. It goes as follows:
Its mighty wings spread over us
The Russian eagle is hovering high;
The Fatherland's tricolour symbol
Is leading Russia's peoples to victory.
The question that springs immediately to mind is "victory over what?" If all Russia's ills are to be overcome, the tricolour will become the busiest banner imaginable. Several victories are needed.
The male life-expectancy rate remains at Third World levels. The economy, despite the high price of oil, is showing signs of further weakness. Workdays lost to alcoholism are returning to rates as high as those of a decade ago.
The war in Chechnya drags on, gangland killings continue apace and the country's crumbling infrastructure threatens further accidents comparable to that of the Kursk submarine and Ostankino TV tower disasters of 2000.
There are worries too about the general human rights situation, particularly in the area of religious practice, with organisations such as the Salvation Army threatened with expulsion. Mr Putin's attitude to media freedom is also open to question. Russia's two-headed imperial eagle, it would appear, will need to keep all its eyes wide open all the time.
Despite all the problems, President Putin's popularity rating has never been higher. More than 70 per cent of Russians now approve of his performance, 22 per cent disapprove and the rest either don't know or don't care.
Perhaps the main reason for this is that Mr Putin has brought the country stability of a sort, which is what the people have craved after the presidency of Mr Boris Yeltsin, when rampant unpredictability became the norm.
Where there is stability there is, at least, hope of inward investment, but international capital is unlikely to flow into Russia until it becomes clear that gangsterism and business are no longer hand in hand.
Despite his stated intentions to rid the wealthy "oligarchs" of political power, Mr Putin's moves appear quite selective. Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, whose media empire opposed Mr Putin's election, has been virtually eliminated from the power structure. Mr Boris Berezovsky, once the Kremlin's modern-day Rasputin, is under pressure, but many others remain close to the centre of government.
The main hope for future economic success centres on the capabilities of the Russian people. The country certainly has the ingredients for a brighter future. It has a strong core of highly intelligent, highly literate and extremely well-educated young people, many of them with skills vital to the development of information technology. It also has the wealthiest reserves of natural resources of any country. Mr Putin will have to ensure that these human and natural resources are neither squandered nor plundered, as they were in the first post-communist decade.
He will also have to overcome a possible economic crisis in the coming year. Russia's auditor general and former prime minister, Mr Sergei Stepashin, told The Irish Times earlier this year that the economy was showing signs of slowing growth and rising inflation.
"Reserves of production growth, which resulted from the rouble devaluation, are close to exhaustion. If the foreign economic situation changes, oil prices drop and the positive foreign trade balance reduces, the problem of meeting the budget targets may grow acute and the business climate in the country may worsen," he said.
On the military front, Russia remains strongly opposed to NATO expansion into the Baltic states and to US plans to build a "National Missile Defense" system. Russia, with its current economic and infrastructural difficulties, will find it difficult to resist a US administration that pushes forward with either of these plans. But it will not always find itself in such a weak position.
The West might find it worth its while treating Russia with greater sensitivity to avoid a build-up of resentment that might be extremely counter-productive at a later date.