title: Diversity as a fact of imperial life
abstract: This chapter addresses diversity as a normal, accepted, and, for centuries, unexamined condition in Eurasian empires. Its focus is on Russia, an empire that took shape in the aftermath of the Mongol conquest. The resource environment, spatial dimensions, and political history of this terrain made effective inclusion of unlike peoples essential to any large-scale political project. The requirement of ruling multiple unlike populations has shaped the configuration of imperial Russia, the Soviet Un