With the recent annexation of Crimea, the rise of nationalism among political elites and Russian society in general has become difficult to ignore. The volume Russia Before and After Crimea: Nationalism and Identity 2010-17 addresses this complex phenomenon. It is edited by two leading Norwegian experts in Russian and post-Soviet politics, specializing in particular in nation and state building, separatism, diasporas, and ethnic conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This is not their first joint product, but a sequel to the volume The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism, 2000–15 published two years earlier. As hinted by the title, the contributions to the second volume (though not all of them) focus on the effects of the Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, the war in the Donbass, and Russian nationalism. While the first volume deals with a rather broad range of aspects, the second one is structured around the dichotomy of state (official) and grassroots (societal) nationalisms. Moreover, the editors propose to see state nationalism and societal nationalism as “connected vessels”: as post-Crimean developments demonstrate, the demobilization of nationalism at the societal level goes hand in hand with the appropriation of the nationalist agenda by the regime. Conversely, as illustrated by Emil Pain in the first chapter, “liberal moments” in contemporary Russian history were usually followed by a proliferation of grassroots nationalist groups. The “connected vessels” hypothesis is interesting and deserves further research and academic discussion.

The restructuring of the nationalist field prompted by the Bolotnaya protests and, more recently and significantly, by Russia's intervention in Ukraine is a thread running through most of the contributions to the volume. This process concerns the mutual dynamics of state and societal nationalisms (Part I and party Part III) as well as the realignment of societal nationalism itself (Part II). By way of introduction, Emil Pain offers a general political map of the nationalist field in Russia. He sees modern and contemporary Russian history as a series of attempts to neutralize the emancipative potential of civic nationalism by the authoritarian state and substitute it with an official “imperial nationalism.” Most interestingly, Pain points to the new phenomenon of a “national democratic,” anti-imperial Russian nationalism that has emerged from the civic awakening of the 2010–12 protests. The annexation of Crimea resulted in the decay of this promising project that was substituted by the rise of imperial nationalism. Eduard Ponarin and Michael Komin propose a slightly different dichotomy of imperial and ethnic nationalisms. Imperial nationalism, for them, is constructed around the “geopolitical myth” and identity of a “great power.” It is characteristic for a Russian political elite that is frustrated “over its failure to Westernise and to be accepted into the club of wealthy and powerful nations” (57). Contrary to the anti-westernism of the political elite, the attitudes of the masses have been shaped by ethnic nationalism (most significantly, anti-migrant sentiment). Ponarin and Komin offer their version of the “connected vessels” hypothesis, arguing that “ethnic nationalism among the masses intensifies when anti-US feelings cool down” (59) and vice versa. The Ukrainian crisis allowed the Russian ruling elite to consolidate society on the basis of anti-western sentiment; imperial nationalism and the idea of a “great power” came to substitute the ethnic nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment of the masses. In a similar vein, Yuri Teper traces the regime's changing attitude towards nationalism through a number of important events, from the Pussy Riot affair to the anti-immigration campaign during the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, and, finally, the annexation of Crimea. He concludes that since 2012 the Kremlin has become more proactive in using (ethnic) nationalism as a tool of mass mobilization with the aim of creating a new “patriotic majority.” From mid-2014, however, the regime retreated from ethnic nationalism back to a more traditional state nationalism and, most significantly, to a “great power” imperialism. The (limited) political uses of ethnic nationalism by the regime are also addressed by Helge Blakkisrud and Pål Kolstø, who hint to the example of the 2013 Moscow mayoral elections, and by Caress Schenk, who is actually reluctant to frame Putin's anti-immigrant rhetoric in nationalist terms.

Part II addresses the realignment of societal nationalism (in particular the radical and far right subfield) in response to the recent events in Ukraine. Alexandra Kuznetsova and Sergey Sergeev focus on grassroots revolutionary nationalism in Russia in opposition to conservative “official nationalism.” In this field, authors identify four main “subscenes” that are located differently in imperial nationalism vs. ethnic nationalism as well as right vs. left axes: national Bolsheviks, national anarchists, national socialists and finally, national democrats. While the majority of these groups sympathized with the Maidan protests or even enthusiastically supported them, projecting their visions of a “national revolution” onto the events in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass split and disoriented the revolutionary nationalists, many of whom joined the fight on both sides. Aleksandr Verkhovskiy confirms the decline of the traditional nationalist movement in Russia resulting from state repressions, the drain caused by the conflict in Ukraine, and general disillusionment. Like the other authors, Verkhovskiy seeks an answer to the question of why the unprecedented nationalist mobilization of 2014 did not generate a new mass movement. The chapters by Robert Horwath and Sofia Tipaldou investigate the ideology and grassroots politics of the national socialist milieu.

All in all, it seems that the general conclusion of the first volume—that a Russian nationalism previously dominated by imperial tendencies is increasingly focused on ethnic issues—is not confirmed by the majority of authors of the second volume. Ethnic Russian nationalism, which had found its way into official rhetoric at the peak of the Ukrainian crisis was instrumental for the annexation of Crimea and the project of Novorossiia, but soon was replaced by the traditional ideology of state patriotism, loyalty to the regime, and pride in “great power” status. Temporarily hijacking their agenda (and using targeted repression based on the charge of extremism), the Kremlin plunged Russian nationalist movements into a deep crisis and effectively disarmed the right-wing opposition to the regime.