The history of the formation of Russia as an empire and the dominance of nationalist discourse in it is clearly reflected in the policy that the country pursued in relation to its "outskirts." Among them are the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, named in the official nomenclature of the 19th century by the North-Western Territory. The state ideology, which created the image of these territories as native Russians, drove itself into a "discursive trap": the ethnocultural reality of the region was different. The book of Darius Stalyunas analyzes the national policy towards each of the most numerous ethnic groups of this region - Belarusians, Lithuanians, Jews and Poles. His research shows that in Lithuania, most of the measures aimed at "Russification," "correction," "merger" or "rapprochement" of the non-Russian population were either unsuccessful or led to completely different consequences that the authorities hoped for. The reasons for these failures were primarily associated with the prevailing ideological stereotypes that made it difficult to see the complex configuration of social reality. Darius Staljunas is a leading researcher at the Institute of Lithuanian History.