As nationalism spread across nineteenth-century Europe, Russias national identity remained murky: there was no clear distinction between the Russian nation and the expanding multiethnic empire that called itself Russia. When Tsar Alexander IIs Great Reforms (18551870s) allowed some freedom for public debate, Russian nationalist intellectuals embarked on a major projectwhich they undertook in daily press, popular historiography, and works of fictionof finding the Russian nation within the empire and rendering the empire in nationalistic terms.From the Shadow of Empire traces how these nationalist writers refashioned key historical mythsthe legend of the nations spiritual birth, the tale of the founding of Russia, stories of Cossack independenceto portray the Russian people as the ruling nationality, whose character would define the empire. In an effort to press the government to alter its traditional imperial policies, writers from across the political spectrum made the cult of military victories into the dominant form of national myth-making: in the absence of popular political participation, wars allowed for the peoples involvement in public affairs and conjured an image of unity between ruler and nation. With their increasing reliance on the war metaphor, Reform-era thinkers prepared the ground for the brutal Russification policies of the late nineteenth century and contributed to the aggressive character of twentieth-century Russian nationalism.From the Shadow of Empire reveals not only a new interpretation of the intellectual life of the 1850s and 1860s, but new readings of texts of the period, ranging from War and Peace and the poetry of Tiutchev to examinations of the founding myth of Russia.Richard Wortman, Columbia University