The editors begin their introduction by pointing out that the ex-USSR provides an ideal situation for studying the effects of a single dominant language (Russian) on a wide variety of genealogically, typologically, and demographically diverse languages over a period of centuries. They give various examples of the relevant sociolinguistic literature, but we could add here The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (Ball Reference Ball2010), which contains significant survey articles on the Baltic States, the Caucasus, and the Russian Federation (with Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova). The editors note that theirs is the first book to bring together detailed case studies of how Russian influences (or, rarely, fails to influence) a wide variety of grammars (including lexicons) that have been subjected to it. The introduction discusses language polices from the Czarist Empire to what I would call the NewSSR, that is, the Russian Federation, which in recent years passed laws undermining the study of all of the languages spoken on its territory except Russian, much like late Soviet Russification policies. A key finding of the articles taken as a group is that the grammatical effects of contact are determined by sociolinguistic context, with the study of historical depth being an important factor. While this is not a new observation, the support given to it by these focused and detailed case studies is welcome, particularly in the face of claims that structure alone determines the outcomes of language contact.

The majority of the articles (seven) are on Uralic languages (four of them Permic), two treat East Caucasian, two treat Chinese Pidgin Russian, and one, by the editors, is synoptic, treating five grammatical parameters (verbs, adjectives, indefinite pronouns, particles and conjunctions, and complex clauses) in East Caucasian, West Caucasian, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Uralic, Yeniseic, Baltic, Sinitic, Paleosiberian, Aleut-Inuit-Yupik, and also Armenian. For verbs, they demonstrate that the preference for light verb versus morphosyntactic adaptation for integrating loan verbs is influenced by areality and typology rather than by the degree of intensity of contact, and in general structural factors of Russian influence are sometimes consistent across diverse languages. Jesse Wichers Schreur discusses the adaptation of loans (mostly Georgian but also Russian) into the complex gender system of Tsova-Tush (Bats'bi), concluding that the language maintains its principles of gender assignment in loans. Ilia Chechuro examines loanword adoption in Rutul (Azeri, Russian) and Tsezic (Georgian, Russian). In Rutul, the prestige and former usefulness of Azeri outweighs the influence of Russian despite the fact that schools are in Russian, while in Tsez, Georgian has ceased to be useful and the prestige of Russian outweighs that of Avar, which is the language of elementary education. Svetlana Edygarova argues that post-Soviet purism in Permic (a reaction to Soviet Russification) is so out of touch with the spoken language that it actually contributes to Permic language endangerment. Olesya Khanina gives a detailed account of how Russian has driven Enets to the verge of extinction at all linguistic levels. Egor Kashkin & Nikita Muravyev discuss calquing and phonotactic borrowing from Russian and also Nenets and Khanty in Izhma Komi, where different sociolinguistic situations give different results in different dialects. Erika Asztalos shows that the shift from original head-final to head-initial clauses in Udmurt depends on whether speakers are in Tatarstan, where Tatar is also a head-final language, or in Udmurtia, where Russian is unchallenged by other languages. Katalin Gugán & Anne Tamm argue that the influence of Russian aspect on Estonian and Surgut Khanty is similar despite the diverging sociolinguistic situations of the languages. They attribute this to the low intensity of borrowing in both languages. Denys Teptiuk discusses quotative strategies in the Permic languages Komi and Udmurt. Udmurt shows both borrowing (copying, matter) and calquing (pattern) strategies, while Komi only calques. This is distinct from the Russian complementizer čto, which is borrowed into both languages. Boglárka Janurik & Zsófia Schön show that code-switching in Erzya, in European Russia, and Surgut Khanty in Siberia (both Finno-Ugric languages) differ in ways explainable by Auer's sociolinguistic continuum model better than by Meyers-Scotton's formalist theories. Elena Perekhvalskaya examines the stability and variability of Chinese Pidgin Russian longitudinally, and Kapitolina Fedorova demonstrates that the choice of morphological forms in Chinese Pidgin Russian can depend on social settings and linguistic stereotypes rather than linguistic structure per se. Before the indices, Yuri Koryakov offers a guide to all of the languages mentioned in the volume (sixty-six) with maps and a variety of sociolinguistically relevant statistics and sections addressing issues such as language vs. dialect and writing.

There is material in this theoretically up-to-date book of interest to all contact linguists, and it is also suitable for use in the classroom.