Empire of nations: ethnographic knowledge and the making of the Soviet Union Francine Hirsch In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that influenced the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers - who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context - produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force", and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR". In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories. Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire. Francine Hirsch is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.