Borderland Russians

Geir H̜nneland discusses some of the big questions in social science: What is identity? How is it narrated by subjects? What is the role of identity and narrative in the study of international relations? The location is the Kola Peninsula, the most heavily militarized area of the world during the Cold War, now set to become Europe's next big oil playground. The author looks at how living close to the border affects people, and whether borderland people are different from other people. Above all, he asks empirical questions about identities in a specific geographic location, discussing what it means to be Russian, what it means to be a northerner and how people in Russia's north-western corner define themselves in relation to their Scandinavian neighbours and their southern relatives. This is a book about the nature of borderland Russians - living in the high north, hailing from the south, with Western neighbours within throwing distance across an increasingly permeable border.