One of the things that is mentioned frequently as a Russian objective of the invasion is wanting a land connection to Crimea. Looking at Apple Maps, it looks to me like Crimea is almost an island. There’s a couple of very narrow isthmuses to the north, and that’s about it, which to me makes the idea of a land connection difficult either way. On the east, there appears to be a bridge over a body of water called the Kerch Strait, which connects on the eastern side with what appears to be mainland Russia on the map.
Here’s my question. On the map those areas (between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and north of Georgia) are labeled with names lie Republic of Adygea, Republic of Karachi-Cherkessia, and Krasnodarsk-Krai. Are these areas that are under dispute with Georgia? If so, are they under dispute in terms of actual control, or only under dispute in the legal sense? What’s the straight dope on this area of land?
Georgia has or had claims on Abkhazia, but I have not heard that they had designs on Krasnodar Krai, or that anyone does not currently recognize it as part of Russia. The current Crimean Bridge opened for traffic in 2018–2019 according to Wikipedia.
Got it. So they’re like states of the United States. It’s probably my US based outlook that leads to me thinking of a “republic” as an independent nation (or at least an area that considers itself an independent nation) rather than a subdivision of a country. The only US based usage that I can think of off the top of my head is the Republic of Texas, when it was an independent nation after seceding from Mexico but before joining the US.
If you’re sufficiently suspicious, a bridge is vulnerable, or at least much less reliably secure than a substantial buffer zone/cordon sanitaire of territory (which was the point of the USSR having “satellite states”, and is or was Putin’s objective for Ukraine and Belarus, if he couldn’t dominate the former satellites now in NATO).
Krasnodar is universally recognised as part of Russia. Further south along the Black Sea coast you will see the city of Sochi, host of the winter Olympics and home of “Putin’s palace” which is also an undisputed part of Russia. Further south again is the city of Sukhumi, which is in the disputed region of Abkhazia.
As I understand, these are sort of separate “republics” that are incorporated into Russia and subject to it - sort of like Indian Reservations in the USA. The whole area beyond Russia the ethnics land mass area and its fuzzy borders were smaller ethnic groups and their own tiny kingdoms, principalities, or what have you (sort of like Germany way back when) that were incorporated into the Russian Empire over the centuries. Some were big and important (and separate) enough to become independent SSR’s inside the Union (USSR) others remained parts of Russia. They remained distinct entities, but are part of Russia.
(I wonder if they can be compared to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man? Or the former Kingdom of Catalonia complaining it doesn’t want to be part of Spain?)
Contrary to our concept of the USSR as a monolithic Russian state, the Soviets were respectful and supportive of assorted distinct ethnicities, as long as they toed the party line. They provided things like support for language and culture preservation. Of course, if like the Chechens, they seems disagreeable to being subject to Russian patriarchy, the central government was willing to set them straight. Also, with regions like Abkhazia, the Moscow folks were happy to exploit ethinic differences to cause problems with any neighbour states (like Georgia) who disagreed with them.
… the difference between a political entity with the name “krai” or “oblast” is purely traditional, similar to the commonwealths in the United States; both are constituent entities equivalent in legal status in Russia with representation in the Federation Council. During the Soviet era, the autonomous oblasts could be subordinated to republics or krais, but not to oblasts. Outside of political terminology, both words have very similar general meaning (“region” or “area” in English) and can often be used interchangeably.
This is not true. What is true is that the “republics” of Russia usually take their name of a non-Russian ethnicity, but that’s where the analogy to Native American reservations in the US ends. The Russian republics are “federal subjects” of the Russian Federation with no more internal autonomy than any other federal subject, no matter its name. And of course, for all practical purposes the federal nature of Russia exists largely on paper; despite the autonomy that the Russian constitution accords to the federal subjects it is, at least nowadays, a highly centralised country with a strong amount of control exercised from Moscow over the activities of the federal subjects.
So - Am I right, basically these are “republics” centered around the local ethnicity, to the extent that any area has any degree of purely/mainly one ethnicity? And the “Republic” designation means the administrative area is that geographic region?
I take it for granted that the various levels of local government in Russia are of course very much under the full direction (polite word) of Moscow with little discretion in what they do, but they are separate administrative areas from each other. They are not just lines on a map.
Sort of. The central concept in the post-Soviet Russian constitution to describe the equivalent of states in the U.S. is “federal subject”. That term was intentionally chosen to be as nondescript as possible, to allow for terminological diversity. There are many different styles for federal subjects; the most common one is oblast. For areas that have historically been settled by some non-Russian ethnicity, the term “republic” is commonly used, and the name of that republic will typically be followed by the name of that predominant ethnicity (which is then referred to as the “titular nation” of that republic). But many republics are far from ethnically homogenous; internal migration within the Soviet Union and then Russia has led to a large influx of other ethnicities (mostly Russians, obviously) into those areas.
Wikipedia has a list of republics that also gives the percentage of the population that belong to the titular nation; these percentages range from as low as 7 % Karelians in the Republic of Karelia to as much as much as 94 % of Ingushs in the Republic of Ingushetia.
Linguistically, many of these non-Russian titular nations have their own language, and often that language is recognised in the respective republic as an official language, but in practice they are often in a precarious situation, with pressure towards increasing Russification.
Also, the republics are not necessarily rural, as I understand the reservations in the US are. Many of them contain fairly large cities, including Kazan in Tatarstan, which is the fifth-largest city in Russia. In such cases, typically you’d have a higher percentage of Russians in the cities than in the countryside of the republic.
I’d like to add that terminologically, the whole thing is a bit less confusing in Russian than in English. The traditional Russian word for “Russian”, русский (russky), refers to the ethnicity. But when the post-Soviet Russian constitution was drafted, that word was not used in the name of the new country, Russian Federation; instead, a newly invented neologism, российский (rossisky), was introduced. It’s intended to refer to Russia in the political sense, i.e. the country including the non-Russian ethnicities.
Yes, there are rarely exact dividing lines between each ethnic grouping - see Munich, 1938. This is a feature of areas that have been settled for centuries or millennia along with the ebb and flow of… history.
US Reservations are typically the crappiest backwater rural land because (a) thanks to the original level of settlement and epidemics, there were not any major cities of native peoples once the European settlement surge reached the areas of the USA, and (b) any decent land was taken by force from the locals, the new arrivals pushing the inhabitants to less desirable lands. I assume some similar process to a lesser extent also happened in Europe continuously from the dawn of history - hence the mixing.
I was more referring to the moderately ambiguous and unusual status of native reserves’ political arrangements. They are creatures of the federal government but not independent, and to some extent I suppose exempt from state government. (Same as in Canada, where many provincial laws do not apply on reserves.) They apply their own traditions, have their own language, etc.
I assume though that the “enthusiastic reforms” following 1917 eliminated any odd autocratic arrangements like hereditary monarchy or clan chief that might have come with such jurisdictions in Russia…?