The Russian question

'Who are we?' is a question that has haunted Russians for centuries. The crisis of identity that underlies Russia's efforts to answer that question and the country's attempts to grapple with modernity_the invention of an alien civilization_is explored in this timely book. Russia's response to the universal challenge posed by modernization's erosion of community has been to fall back on that most enduring bond of human association_the kinship tie_as Allensworth here defines as nationalism. The author draws on rare Russian sources to explore the various ways nationalists have responded to modernization and to chart a likely course for Russia's future development. From National Bolshevism to Christian nationalism, from Zhirinovskiy to Solzhenitsyn, this study ties the ideas and ideologies of nationalism to the question that produced them and cements their connection to the crisis of modernity.

Wayne Allensworth is a Russia analyst at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.