A blank shot of the cruiser Aurora signaled the attack on the Winter Palace and put an end to negotiations on the status of Finland and Ukraine between the Provisional government and authorities representing these borderlands. Considered from this perspective, the process of further disintegration of the former Russian empire went on regardless of the political stances supported by the negotiating parties. In its final variant, the issue had been solved by force. Nevertheless, the analysis of these negotiations allows revisiting the potential of autonomist and (con-) federalist alternatives to the empire’s break up. Despite the fundamental incompatibility of their final goals, the participants of the negotiations were ready for mutual concessions. Their projects offered a new understanding of the juridical link between the Empire and its distinct borderlands. It did not comply with the notion of complete sovereignty of nation-states, at the same time it went beyond the Russian lawyers’ understanding of the state unity.