Defining Self

The authors aim to bring to a wider audience an insight into identity formation in one of the largest multi-national countries in the world. Twentieth-century politics have all too often obscured the complexity of identity formation in Russia, which, arguably, has proved detrimental to our greater understanding of identity processes at a theoretical level. The book aims to bring into sharper focus the process by which a multitude of identities began to emerge in the Russian empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book also reviews a series of case-studies of identity formation in Russia based on religion, historical beliefs, language, local culture, and various combinations of these factors.