This book emanates from the research project ‘Nation-building, nationalism and the new “other” in today's Russia’ (NEORUSS) funded by the Research Council of Norway under the Russia and the High North/Arctic (NORRUSS) programme, project number 220599. It is a sequel to The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism, 2000–15 (2016), edited by Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, likewise published by Edinburgh University Press. Since our research project commenced, major events have taken place that affect Russian nationalism, in particular the annexation of Crimea and the war in Eastern Ukraine. The first volume was well underway when these momentous developments unfolded and we were able to reflect on them only to a limited degree. In this second volume, with more distance to these events, we are better able to incorporate the effects of the Ukrainian crisis on Russian nationalism.

Our research project organised a capstone conference at Tallinn University 28–29 April 2016, and most of the chapters in the current volume were first presented as papers at that conference. We would like to express our sincere gratitude towards the Tallinn University Conference Centre and to Professor Raivo Vetik for their invaluable assistance in organising this conference.

The English language in this book, as everything we publish, has been corrected and improved upon by our indispensable copy editor Susan Høivik.