As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russia's national identity remained murky - there was no clear distinction between the Russian nation and the expanding multiethnic empire that called itself Russian. When Tsar Alexander II's Great Reforms (1855-1870s) allowed some freedom for public debate, Russian nationalist intellectuals embarked on a major project - which they undertook in the daily press, popular historiography, and works of fiction - of finding the Russian nation within the empire and rendering the empire in nationalistic terms.
As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russia's national identity remained murky - there was no clear distinction between the Russian...
