ABSTRACT
States are not given by some natural dispensation. They are the result of purposeful activities exercised through forced projects or political contracts. The Muscovite state took the lead in the struggle against the Mongols, and, ever since, Russian national identity has been preoccupied with national defence. On the great Eurasian plain, with few natural boundaries other than great rivers but no mountains other than the severely eroded Urals chain, defence took the form of expansion. Russia entered the modern era as an empire, but a distinctive one since it lacked the characteristic division between a metropolis and a periphery. A new Soviet intelligentsia was born, and at the same time concessions were made to the form if not the content of Russian identity and history. Vladimir Putin appealed to the Russian nationalist vote by promising to regulate labour migration and by arguing that Russia is a ‘unique civilisation’ in which the nation-state model did not apply.
