The book addresses Estonian, Ukrainian and Georgian identities that develop against the background of the neo-imperial policies of Russia and EU normative power projection. With the decreasing explanatory value of the "post-Soviet" frame, the authors propose the concept of borderlands for bringing together a group of countries located at the intersection of different cultural, religious, ethnic and civilizational flows and systems. It is argued that for borderlands nation-building envisages strategies of meaning-making aimed at self-identification, consolidation and integration, along with strategies of adjusting to practical tools and mechanisms of governance generated and shared by Europe. Performative cultural and sportive events, such as Euro 2012 in Lviv, Song and Dance Festival 2014 in Tallinn, and Youth Olympic Games 2015 in Tbilisi are at the centre of each of these case studies. Andrey Makarychev is Professor at Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia. Previously he held research and teaching positions at Free University of Berlin (Germany), Danish Institute for International Studies (Copenhagen, Denmark), Centre for Conflict Studies (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland), and George Mason University (Fairfax, USA). Alexandra Yatsyk is Head of the Center for Cultural Studies of Post-Socialism at Kazan Federal University, Russia, and Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Uppsala, Sweden. She has also served and held research at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (GWU, USA), Centre for EU-Russia relations (University of Tartu, Estonia), School of Language, Translation and Literature Studies (University of Tampere, Finland), and Centre for Urban History for East Central Europe (Lviv, Ukraine).