In his new book Familiar Strangers, Dr. Erik R. Scott reinterprets the course of modern Russian and Soviet history. Scott contests the portrayal of the Soviet Union as a Russian-led empire composed of separate national republics and instead argues that it was an empire of diasporas. Looking at the rise and fall of the Soviet Union from a Georgian perspective, Scott offers a new way of thinking about the experience of minorities in multiethnic states, with implications far beyond the borders of Russia and Eurasia.