Russia - (Inventing the Nation) by Vera Tolz (Paperback)

About the Book

This extensive analysis of Russian national identity spans three centuries of Russian
cultural history to place post-communist Russia within a broad
historical background. Combining a rich historical study with a rigorous analytical
framework, the book is an essential tool for understanding contemporary
Russia.

Book Synopsis

The question of national identity is central to the future of
Russia. This extensive analysis, spans three centuries of Russian
cultural history to place post-communist Russia within a broad
historical background. The author focuses on three ways of defining
Russia and Russians: Russia as a counterpart to the West; Russians as
creators of a unique multi-ethnic community; and Russians as members of
the community of Eastern Slavs. She then demonstrates how these three
perspectives have dominated the views of Russia in the modern era and
traces their origins back to writers and historians in the eighteenth
century. Combining a rich historical study with a rigorous analytical
framework, the book is an essential tool for understanding contemporary
Russia.

Review Quotes

"Russia: Inventing the nation by Vera Tolz makes a major contribution towards elucidating how Russians' own understanding of themselves has evolved over the past three centuries. Most previous Western histories have treated the Soviet Union as an irrelevant or regressive period in the evolution of Russian nationhood. Tolz ""brings back the Soviet Union"", not idealizing it but showing that it played its own paradoxical and ambivalent role." --Times Literary Supplement

"Russia, by Vera Tolz, is thoroughly researched and clearly written. Reading the book is illuminating..." --History: Reviews of New Books.

"Although a volume so kaleidoscopic in content, so allusive in argument, and so multilayered in construction necessarily yields more to those familiar with the subject than it can to the novice, Tolz writes vigorously throughout, and readers at all levels of sophistication will have something to learn from her consistently interesting book." --Slavonica

"[A] substantive and solid overview of the basic concepts and formative issues related to Russian nationalism...[A] valuable addition to the existing studies on these issues." --Slavic and East European Journal

About the Author

Vera Tolz is Professor of Russian Studies, University of Manchester.