"This is a briliant tour-de-force analysis of the history of ethnopolitics in the tsarist and Soviet empires. Students and scholars alike will welcome the succinct outline of state policies, social processes, and focal events forming the identities of groups and nations. . . . A very important and useful book . . . more durable than other recent publications dealing with the ethnic dimension of the Soviet collapse."--Slavic Review
"Here is the book of choice if one wants a succinct treatment of nationalism past and present in the former Soviet Union."--Foreign Affairs