ABSTRACT
The civic nation-building strategy implemented by Alexander II during the Great Reforms had in the 1880s been replaced by an ethnic strategy which was supposed to make the empire more homogenous and promote imperial loyalty. Imperialism, both in theory and in practice, affected the liberals' approach to Russian politics and to nation and nationalism. This chapter explores the way Russian liberals dealt with the challenge of imperial diversity and how they, like many Western liberals, used nationalism to justify the empire. It focuses on his political thought between the Revolution of 1905 and the First World War when he formulated his program for a Great Russia. The humiliating Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese war in September 1905, the failed revolution the same year, the terror and violence that accompanied it and the regime's unwillingness to share power created an atmosphere of crisis among many liberal Russians.
