This study investigates Russia’s 100 year expansion into her southern periphery, and the gradual integration of this new territory through infrastructure. These measures culminated in the construction of roads through difficult mountainous territory in a region with diverse ethnicities and confessions. The author holds that Russia was only gradually able to solve this multitude of challenges with the ideological self-assertion of being a civilizing mission. Eventually, the Caucasus was integrated into the Tsarist Empire without the russification of indigenous ethnicities, while still offering them a share in the modernizing process Russia was undergoing. However, some of the “unruly” mountainous tribes were resettled or even exiled to the Ottoman Empire.

Twenty four essays invite readers to depart from the well-trodden tourist trail and take an excursion into St. Petersburg's historical past: visit the scenes of former German and Jewish life; the Moskovsky Prospekt, a magnificent boulevard built under Stalin; Lake Ladoga, which froze over in 1942 thereby providing the only link to the besieged city; the locations of Bolshevist mass rallies; the infamous police department, but also the gardens, cinemas and apartments. The result is a lively mosaic of locations that reveals the history of the city and its citizens.