In his recent article in Nezavisimaya gazeta, the Kremlin's grey cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, suggested that Russia does not have “a deep state,” but rather “a deep people” (glubinnye liudi), who form the true spiritual backbone of Vladimir Putin's state. This play with the populist narrative is not a complete novelty for the Kremlin. The regions, when necessary, become a valuable source of the metropolitan elite's political legitimization. Most recently, the 2012 presidential campaign featured a worker from Nizhnhii Tagil, Igor Kholmanskikh, who threatened to come to Moscow and help the police suppress those Muscovites who were protesting against vote-rigging. Kholmanskikh, whose function was to represent the “real” Russians, as opposed to the spoiled and corrupt Muscovites, helped the Kremlin secure some votes. After 2012, he was nowhere to be seen: the Kremlin no longer needed such a close relationship with a man from the provinces. In the world of the Kremlin, just a few regions are worth its attention: St. Petersburg and Chechnya.

The relations between Moscow and Russian regions are far from perfect. In many ways, local identities are built around the notion of Moscow as the Other, the entity that people who live in the provinces both love and hate. This discourse of local identity building is the subject of Lyudmila Parts’ excellent book: she carefully dissects the discourses that are generated by the relationship between the regions and the capital in the post-Soviet time. She suggests looking at it through the triangle “The Provinces-the Capital-the West” where Moscow plays a role similar to that of the Other, just as the west does in the all-Russian nation-building narrative. This model helps explain how exactly provincial intellectual elites construct regional identities and why Moscow is so often depicted as a wicked place. Parts studies how these identities are played out in the local press, literature and films and looks at both the nationalistic and liberal mythologies. For nationalists, Moscow is a repository of filth and corruption; for liberals, it is the provinces that lag behind the capital in culture and economy, and everything the provinces do should emulate the action of the capital.

Parts focuses on the press in the European part of Russia and shows how in the early 1990s, when Moscow was weak politically, an absence of control led to the formation of highly vibrant local initiatives that displayed pride in their provinciality. Her analysis has captured a picture of what has now been totally lost and we are lucky to see that the local elites were very enlightened and enthusiastic about their capacity to turn their regions into thriving cultural centers. Indeed, for many regional elites of the 1990s, Moscow was an obstacle hampering their attempt to build a direct relationship with the west. Parts shows that in the case of Voronezh, where intellectual elites tried to forge a direct link with Paris. The power of the regions at the end of the 1990s was such that they were able to challenge the Kremlin. Some especially powerful regions indeed had foreign envoys abroad. After 2000 the Kremlin ensured that regional independence was thoroughly undermined.

The uneasy “capital vs provinces” relationship is a source of inspiration for provincial writers and Moscow-based artists alike, who either idealize or demonize the provinces. For writers like Aleksey Ivanov and Sergei Yakovlev, the provinces are the assemblage point at which to recreate identity post-1991. It will not be a tragedy if Moscow disappears, Russia will definitely survive without it. For many Moscow-based directors, the Russian provinces are a repository of positive and negative myths, which can be used interchangeably. The focus on a range of films and series helps Parts to create a multifaceted illustration of the way in which Muscovite directors assign the image of a “terrible” and an “ideal” realm to areas located beyond Moscow's ring road. As we see from the book, this process of internal colonization is far from complete.

Parts's book touches upon a problem of subnational identity construction in a context where there is no clear national identity. The multiplicity of regions and local stories is indeed a rich source of mythmaking. Had Parts decided to explore the provinces beyond the Urals, the picture would have been even more intricate. Still, this book is a highly recommended first step for everyone who decides to explore what Russia without Putin might look like.