The old wisdom “show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are” loses its universal applicability in the multifaceted imperial context with its much more than three “dimensions.” In an empire, parties can ally against the “metropole” or a neighbor “colony,” and in the changed circumstances befriend the metropole against a different colony, or be friends with all the oppressed and against all the oppressors, or unite with the oppressors and oppressed of one’s own nation against another nation, and so forth. Theoretically, this dynamism of the roles of friends and foes is characteristic not only of imperial societies (or those described as imperial). In the modern postnational epoch, we see with particular clarity that the construction of relations of solidarity and antagonism are complex and situationally determined: a composite “subject” sustains simultaneously several autonomous systems of relations that may contradict each other. This vision distinguishes new imperial history (and in general, modern studies of sociocultural diversity) from traditional nationalism or postcolonial studies, which focus on unambiguous symbolic, discursive, and political relations that allow us to sustain clear-cut binary oppositions (e.g., between the normative modernity and the nonmodern) and unequivocally define the boundaries of a nation by juxtaposing it to some ultimate Other.
In the four thematic issues of Ab Imperio in 2010, the editors invite authors and readers to shift their attention from the ontology and structuralist symmetry of the opposition of “friend–foe” to the fluctuations of the roles of “friend” and “foe” and functionality of these roles in the imperial situation. The editors suggest an exploration of the images and functions of “friend” and “foe” in the multilayered and heterogeneous imperial context. This allows us to discover and describe situations in which a “friend” simultaneously appears to be a “foe” (e.g., the Pole as a Slav and the Pole as an enemy of Russian imperial statehood). We can also detect situations in which these very basic dichotomies lose their specific content and their normative component. Consider the category of “neighbor.” Is “neighbor” a “friend” or “foe,” or is the concept of “neighbor” associated with one of the poles depending on the situation and the intention of historical actors? Is there room for the category of “stranger,” a neutral social interlocutor, in the repertoire of social experience? In other words, instead of elusive structural statics we are interested in the historical dynamics of the imperial sociopolitical, cultural, and economic experience. This experience is reflected in the discursive (and not only discursive) attachments and repulsions of groups, societies, and states.
In contrast to the ideals of multiculturalism and tolerance that dominate today’s social sciences, historians have done much to show that past experience significantly deviates from these norms. How images of the enemy and of external danger were used for supporting and legitimizing political communities, national distinctiveness, and patriotic mobilization during wars and political crises have all been studied especially thoroughly. One cannot imagine today’s nationalism studies without thematic foci on hostility, repulsion, resentment, and the perceived dangers of the extinction of political independence and cultural distinctiveness of the national body. While recognizing the importance of these aspects of solidarity and conflict in past experience, the editors of Ab Imperio are proposing that we think about those (not necessarily obvious) important roles and situations that find themselves in the unmarked space between the extreme poles of friendship and animosity. Thus in 2010 the journal will focus on the practices of marking solidarity and differences and on motivations for these practices, from anthropological aspects of social interaction to the sphere of foreign policy.
In the issue inaugurating the new annual program, two prevailing themes have been informed by the discussion of the dynamics of friendship and animosity in the imperial context. One theme deals with historiographic and methodological frameworks of our perception of the past, and the second theme concerns the practices of drawing boundaries between the “similar” (to various degrees) and “alien” groups. The Methodology section features the Russian translation of the introductory essay to the collection Empire Speaks Out: Language of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2009). The text offers an analytical survey of the most recent attempts to conceptualize the history of Russian empire as a space of domination, diversity, and interconnectivity – that is, of those historiographic models that break with structuralist and teleological oppositions, such as friend–enemy (empire–colony, empire–nation), and pursue more complex and contextualized approaches. It is from this vantage point that the latest stage in postcolonial studies is discussed in the essay, and an alternative research model is advanced. This model treats the imperial experience of Russia in multiple comparative contexts, thus overcoming the constraints of conventional approaches that focus exclusively on either coloniality, or [multi]nationality.
This theme is further developed in the forum The Imperial Turn in Russian Studies: Ten Years Later. Contributors to the forum shared their opinions on the present-day state of the field formerly known as “Russian Studies.” Over the past decade, this field has been transforming along two main directions: on the one hand, there is a growing interest in specific imperial and national experiences, and on the other, an emerging tradition of studying modernity and modernization (in the late imperial and Soviet societies). Forum participants share their opinions on the prospects of these two trends, on the ways to integrate “Russian Studies” into a broader international field of postcolonial studies, and on the importance of studying the history of the second world. They also discuss, how the contemporary political situation defines the boundaries of our objects of study, and what is recognized as “our” history.
The History section is dedicated to a key “memory event” of past years, which has been of major importance not only for Ukrainian society and Ukrainian historiography. The publication of the book by a well-known American historian, Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton University Press, 2007), has stirred contradictory feelings among Ukrainian historians and intellectuals. The book is a documentary travelogue of the author’s visiting places in Galicia and his recording of instances of complete oblivion of the memory of more than half a million Jews inhabiting the region before World War II. Although the book engages the problem of Galician Ukrainians’ participation in the Holocaust, its main thrust is the contemporary erasure of the Jewish presence from the history of the new Ukraine, the retrospective “estrangement” of the Jews, and an analysis of nationalism in Western Ukraine. Ab Imperio publishes the English-language text of the introduction to the book written by Bartov for its forthcoming Ukrainian translation. In this text, Bartov responds to the critiques voiced by Ukrainian commentators about the original English-language publication. The discussion of the book initiated by the Kiev journal Ukraina Moderna and continued in this issue of Ab Imperio vividly demonstrates how flexible the discursive divide is that turns “the other” into “enemies” or “friends,” or produces a homogenized group of “us,” which under different circumstances disintegrates into antagonistic and competing subgroups.
Sociologists Ekaterina Khodzhaeva and Elena Shumilova describe a similar mechanism of contextual and discursive determination of the notions of “friends” and “foes” in their article analyzing the rhetorical construction of communities of believers by Orthodox Christian and Muslim clergy in Kazan. Based on a series of interviews conducted with those priests and mullahs in Kazan who exercise authority among their parishioners, are actively engaged in communal work and education, and teach in the religious educational establishments, the article demonstrates that ethnic categories are integrated into the studied religious discourses and are used to symbolically map the boundaries of lay communities in modern-day Russia and in Tatarstan in particular.
In the section Newest Mythologies, the article by Alexander Knysh analyzes another form of dialogue between the religious community and the lay society, which is also perceived as hostile and alien. Knysh discusses the recent (2007) establishment of the “Caucasus Emirate” by a group of mujahideen of the Northern Caucasus. The Emirate was announced within the context of the jihad waged against Russia, and included several republics of the Russian Caucasus. The creation of this virtual state marked the paradigm shift from uncoordinated nationalist movements striving for political independence toward the transethnic Islamist movement. Knysh traces out a conflict between the secular-minded Chechen nationalists, who sought independence from Russia through the political pressure of international organizations on Russian authorities, and the Islamists, who see anti-Russian jihad and the installing of Sharia as the only way to liberate the entire Northern Caucasus.
The issue also features a comprehensive index of all of the materials published in Ab Imperio Quarterly over the first decade of its existence, 2000–2009.

Editors of Ab Imperio:
I. Gerasimov
S. Glebov
A. Kaplunovski
M. Mogilner
A. Semyonov