ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies and locates Russia, geographically and historically. It explains the multinational nature of Russia, the concepts of Russian and Russian citizen. The chapter examines the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church. It focuses on the 1993 Constitution and its statements about the nature of Russia. The Preamble to the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation begins: We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, so while bearing the name of its numerically dominant nationality, the Russians, the Constitution recognises that Russia is a multinational state. The preamble also talks of the peoples of Russia as united by a common destiny on our land, implying a shared Russian identity that transcends the individual identities of Russia's over 160 different nationalities. Russian is the official language but over one hundred languages are spoken. Although Russia's liberal reformers stressed Russia's western or European identity, Russia geographically and culturally straddles the Eurasian land mass.
