Ethnographers helped to perceive, understand and to also to Russia's remarkable cultural diversity. This book focuses on the specific contexts as ethnographic knowledge was created in modern Russia, showing readers how tsarist and Soviet ethnographers simultaneously defined both their subjects and their own expertise over a roughly three-hundred year period.

The essays address fields into which ethnographic knowledge poured military, mission, history, anthropology, literature etc. as well as broadening the understanding of knowledge formats pictures, maps, atlases, plays, tape recordings, lectures, films, posters, museums, exhibitions etc. noticeably exerting an influence on imperial identities