Before Russia can be described, it must first be circumscribed: found, located, identified – that is, defined as an entity – in time and space. Or so we might tend to think. A country, we are tempted to assume, is a distinct place with a distinct history: look at a map, and there is Russia, and its history is the important things that have happened in and to it over the course of time. Finding Russia is not, however, quite so straightforward. Russia in time is not a single, fixed narrative but a range of possible stories; and over that same time entities which we or their inhabitants might call Russia have appeared in radically different shapes and sizes, and even in different places.

Chapter 2 is concerned with the linear narratives of Russia, with the emergence and development of stories designed to create and sustain a sense of ‘historical’ coherence and significance: from chroniclers and sermonists in the eleventh and twelfth centuries right through to post-Soviet reflections on the shape of Russia's past. In the second part of the chapter two, ‘case studies’ illustrate how modern cultural products can play (both crudely and subtly) upon the accumulated narratives and thus make implicit – and sometimes polemical – claims about national identity.

Chapter 3 begins with a summary of shifting political borders and locations, from the early ‘Rus Land’, through Muscovy, the Empire with its capital in St Petersburg, the Soviet Union and eventually to the post-Soviet Russian Federation.