  Given a category C acted on by the loop group G((t)), we define its Whittaker
model Whit(C) as C^{N((t)),\chi}, where \chi is a non-degenerate character. We
study the properties of this construction. When C is the category of sheaves on
the quotient of G((t)) by a congruence subgroup, we find a "finite-dimensional"
model for Whit(C); the corresponding geometric object is Drinfeld's
compactification, denoted \overline{Bun}_N (with poles and level structure).
