The central challenge to imperial powers entering the modern era was the schooling of their peoples. How could they insure the literacy that modernity required without providing a foundation for nationalism among the colonized? In Russia's eastern empire in the late nineteenth century, Orthodox Christianity vied with Islam for people's souls, Russian language competed with Tatar and local vernaculars, and western secularism undermined traditional religious authority among both Muslim and Orthodox faithful. The clash with local languages shook the stability of the empire. This book tells the story of the politics of alphabets, languages, and schooling in the eastern empire of Russia from 1860 to 1917.