Writing well before the annexation of Crimea and the secession crisis in eastern Ukraine, Aleksandr Verkhovskii and Emil Pain, the authors of our first selection, foresaw the gradual escalation in Russia of “expansionist, militarist, and ethno-xenophobic sentiments, both in society and within the power elite, as civilizational nationalism gains strength and becomes institutionalized.” Their rich explication of the concept of “civilizational nationalism” sheds light on its ethnic, cultural, religious, and political strands. The religious strand was explored in the previous issue of the Russian Social Science Review (vol. 56, no. 3), on “Churches and States.” Articles in the current issue by Vladimir Mukomel' and Sergei P. Peregudov follow the ethnic and nationalist strands. We close with an article by Igor' Dolutskii, a liberal iconoclast whose 1994 Russian history textbook was singled out for attack by Vladimir Putin himself and removed from the list of acceptable texts in the fall of 2003. Henceforth the measure of a history textbook was to be its positive contribution to the building of Russian patriotism.
