Curated playlist
Republics of Russia
- BashkortostanBashkortostan sits wedged between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, a republic the size of a small country that most people in the world have never heard of. With a population of just over four million as of 2025, it is the most…
- ChechnyaChechnya sits wedged between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in a corner of Eastern Europe that has refused, for centuries, to be governed by anyone who arrived uninvited. The republic covers roughly 16,500 square kilometers, a territory…
- DagestanDagestan holds a distinction that most people would never guess: it is the southernmost tip of Russia, a republic that shares borders not just with fellow Russian regions but with Azerbaijan and Georgia, and opens its eastern flank to the…
- IngushetiaIngushetia holds a distinction that defies easy explanation: it is one of the poorest, most conflict-scarred republics in Russia, and yet, as of 2017, it also has the highest life expectancy in the entire country. Covering just 3,600…
- BuryatiaBuryatia sits at a crossroads that few maps quite capture. The Republic of Buryatia borders Mongolia to the south, and to its north lies Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. That single geographic fact has shaped everything about…
- TuvaTuva sits at the geographical center of Asia, a republic within Russia that most of the world has never heard of. Physicist Richard Feynman became so obsessed with reaching it that his lifelong, ultimately unsuccessful attempt was…
- KalmykiaKalmykia is the only place in Europe where Buddhism is the majority religion. Tucked into the steppes of southern Russia, this republic of roughly 275,000 people traces its spiritual life not to Rome or Constantinople but to Tibet. How did…
- Sakha RepublicThe Sakha Republic covers more than 3,083,523 square kilometres of the Russian Far East, making it the single largest country subdivision on Earth. It is larger than Argentina, yet home to only about one million people. Its capital,…
- Komi RepublicThe Komi Republic sits in the northeast of European Russia, a territory larger than Germany, where forests cover more than 70% of the land and winter temperatures can plunge to -58.1 degrees Celsius. At its heart is the city of Syktyvkar,…
- Republic of Crimea (Russia)The Republic of Crimea sits on a peninsula that juts into the Black Sea, and its legal status depends entirely on who you ask. Russia calls it one of its federal republics. Ukraine calls it occupied territory. Most of the world sides with…
- Republics of RussiaIn July 1990, Boris Yeltsin stood in Kazan and told Russia's republics to "take as much sovereignty as you can swallow." The republics of Russia are twenty-one internationally recognized constituent units of the Russian Federation. Each…