Book excerpt: Making Russians is a valuable and insightful examination, based on a solid archival foundation, of the nationalities policies in tsarist Russia's northwestern borderlands of Lithuania and Belarus. Making Russians explores the various strategies of Russification that the imperial government pursued largely unsuccessfully in this region. The book is essential reading for all students of imperial Russia. It has applications for the present as well, when issues of national identity continue to engage the citizens of both Russia and the states of the Former Soviet Union.John Klier, University College London