Exploring the creation, transformation, and imagination of Russian space as a lens through which to understand Russia's development over the centuries, this volume makes an important contribution to Russian studies and the "new spatial history." It considers aspects of the relationship between place and power in Russia from the local level to the national and from the eighteenth century through the present.

Essays include: Melissa K. Stockdale, "What is a Fatherland? Changing Notions of Duty, Rights and Belonging in Russia"; Mark Bassin, "Nationhood, Natural Regions, Mestorazvitie: Environmental Discourses in Classic Eurasianism"; John Randolph, "Russian Route: The Politics of the Petersburg-Moscow Road, 1700-1800"; Richard Stites, "On the Dance Floor: Royal Power, Class, and Nationality in Servile Russia"; Patricia Herlihy, "Ab Oriente ad Ultimum Oriente: Eugen Scuyler, Russia and Central Asia"; Robert Argenbright, "Soviet Agitational Vehicles: Colonization from Place to Place"; Christopher Ely, "Street Space and Political Culture under Alexander II"; Sergei Zhuk, "Unmaking the Sacred Landscape of Orthodox Russia: Religious Pluralism, Identity Crisis, and Religious Politics on the Ukrainian Borderlands of the late Russian Empire"; Cathy A. Frierson, "Filling in the Map for Vologda's Post-Soviet Identity"; and Lisa A, "Kirschenbaum, Place, Memory and the Politics of Identity: Historical Buildings and Street Names in Leningrad-St. Petersburg."

Mark Bassin is Baltic Sea Professor of the History of Ideas, Södertörn University, Stockholm, and author of The Gumilev Mystique and Imperial Visions. Christopher Ely is associate professor of history in the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University and author of This Meager Nature Landscape and National Identity in Imperial Russia and Underground Petersburg. Melissa K. Stockdale is a Brian and Sandra O'Brien Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880–1918 and Mobilizing the Russian Nation.