When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 15 new countries were created.
This massive union of different republics comprised nations as vastly different as Turkmenistan
and Latvia, but Russia is still pretty big today.
I mean, it borders both Norway and North Korea, and has a surprising amount of diversity within
those borders.
So just how big and diverse is Russia?
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In the west, we generally tend to view Russia as one big, monolithic, all-Slavic country,
and for those of us who know a little bit more about Russian geography, we still think
of Russia as one big, monolithic country, but where almost all the people live in about
a quarter of its land area, leaving the brave, crazy frontiersmen to populate the rest of…
nowhere.
Except, Russia is very, very big, and even though 110 million of its 143 million people
live in the European parts of the country, that still leaves over 30 million people across
Siberia.
This is tiny by most standards, especially in Asia, but that doesn’t mean that there
isn’t still a crazy amount of cultural diversity here.
So Russia’s not just the Slavic life that you see on Life of Boris, Russia is also populated
by various Turkic, Caucasian, Uralic, Mongolic, and other various different people groups.
Now, Russia is made up of 85 total federal subjects, which is basically the catch-all
term for all these different subdivisions.
You see, like how the US has states and territories, each with different powers and authorities,
Russia has different types of subdivisions depending on the needs of that particular
area.
First off, Russia has 46 oblasts, which are basically just like regular old states, nothing
too special except… more Slavic.
There are also autonomous oblasts… well, just one, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, whose
population is only 0.1% Jewish, because it turns out we don’t all live on the Chinese
border.
The next type are the 9 krais.
The term krai was used historically for the frontiers and the borderlands, much like [Ukraina],
which was always kind of sandwiched between Russia and the rest of Europe.
However nowadays, they’re essentially just like regular oblasts, and many of them don’t
even touch an international border.
There are also 4 autonomous okrugs (basically autonomous districts, but with a somewhat
substantial ethnic minority), and three cities of federal importance -- no really, that’s
what they’re called, and they are Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the newest one…
Sevastopol…
Finally, we have the republics, our main focus in this video.
In terms of different cultures, this is the juicy part of Russia, as republics are entitled
to two things that ordinary oblasts, okrugs, and the like aren’t, which are their own
constitutions and official languages other than Russian.
This is because the 22 republics were made for individual people groups that all have
very different histories, cultures, and languages from the Russian majority (even if Russians
are the majority population in their territory).
Oh, and they even have their own anthems!
Okay, now for the cultural stuff.
Grouping the more than twenty non-Slavic ethnic groups represented by a republic into neat
little language families, we get five different families we can look a little bit into: Caucasian,
Mongolic, Turkic, Uralic, and Iranian (also, we can mostly avoid the whole Crimea issue
here, since Crimea is a republic, but wasn’t actually made into one with a specific ethnic
group in mind, so please, put your torches down!)
Let’s talk about the Caucasian republics first-- and no, I don’t just mean white
people, I mean people of the Caucasus-- the republics here being Adygea, Chechnya, Ingushetia,
Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia; representing the Adyghe, Chechens, Ingush,
and Kabardians.
No surprise, all these groups live north of the Caucasus Mountains, arguably one of the
most linguistically diverse mountain ranges in the world (take that, Alps!).
Aside from the Azeris and Armenians in the area, there are also 3 Caucasian groups, being
the Northwest and Northeast Caucasians, and the Kartvelians (a group which includes Georgian).
These three language families are actually all completely different from each-other,
being three of the world’s primary language families (you know, like Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic,
etc.)
Next are Buryatia and Kalmykia, who speak Mongolic languages.
Not surprisingly, Buryatia borders Mongolia, and the two are said to have very similar
cultures, but interestingly Kalmykia is all the way over by the Caucasus republics.
This is the result of a migration that happened in the early 17th century.
The Kalmyks are actually a subset of Oirat Mongols, which is a different group from the
Khalkha Mongols seen in Mongolia, who migrated westwards throughout Kazakhstan and into modern-day
Russia, briefly establishing the Kalmyk Khanate.
The Turkic peoples are a very widespread group, comprising of peoples such as the Turks in
Turkey, the Azeris, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Uyghurs.
However in Russia they make up the majority groups of Altai, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia,
Karachay-Cherkessia (again), Khakassia, Yakutia/Sakha, Tatarstan, and Tuva-- or Tannu Tuva.
The Turkic peoples are also very diverse, especially religiously, with different groups
practicing everything from Sunni Islam to Eastern Orthodoxy to various Shamanist beliefs.
I mean, when you have around 160 million people spread all across Asia for thousands of years,
that does kind of make sense.
Next are the Uralic peoples.
Possibly their most well-known groups are the people of Hungary, Estonia, and Finland
(as well as the Saami people), so this might not initially seem all that big of a group,
until you look at how many groups there are on the other side of the Russian border.
Russia also has the republics of Karelia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia, and Udmurtia.
The Uralic peoples have actually lived in these areas around the northernmost areas
of Europe and Asia for possibly over 7,000 years, and have branched off into numerous
different groups and cultures, with the most widespread around Russia being of the Samoyedic
group, including groups like the Nenets, Enets, Nganasans, and Selkups.
To wrap it up, we will talk about two more republics.
First, Dagestan, which is an incredibly diverse republic made up of Avars, Dargins, Kumyks,
Lezgins, Laks, Azeris, Tabasarans, and Chechens, but no one ethnic group makes up more than
30% of the republic’s population of 2.9 million.
Also, it’s worth talking about the one republic for a people group that speaks an Indo-European
language.
You know of the controversial separatist region in Georgia called South Ossetia?
Probably not, but ever wondered where North Ossetia is?
Well, North Ossetia-Alania is on the other side of the Russian border.
These areas make up a group called the Ossetians, who are an Iranian ethnic group also with
ties to the Caucasus Mountains.
So that’s a rough overview of just how diverse Russia really is.
In fact, there are so many other ethnic groups spread all around Russia, but these are just
the ones with their own republics.
The republics themselves were established by Lenin in 1922 as the Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republics (ASSRs), and during the 1920s were encouraged to celebrate their own
cultures.
But in the 30’s Stalin kind of turned everything around, instead purging non-Russians from
government, and mandating the Russian language all around the Soviet Union.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union however, the fate of the ASSRs weren’t completely
certain, resulting in everything from independence referendums in Tatarstan to a major conflict
in Chechnya that you might have heard about.
The republics were never entitled to independence from Russia, but… yeah, things are actually
still kind of complicated, I think that’s enough political talk for now, see you!
Thank you as always for watching this video.
If you enjoyed it, or even want to see more of these from me in the future, do let me
know!
Perhaps a video on a country like India wouldn’t be a bad idea.
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new about our world every Sunday.