Republics of Russia
In 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 was created as a national homeland for an ethnic minority called the titular nationality. A twenty-second republic, Crimea, sits under Russian control but remains recognized by most of the world as Ukrainian territory. Centuries of Russian migration have meant that in many of these regions the titular nationality is no longer a majority of the population. How did regions established with their own constitutions, languages, and national anthems lose almost every meaningful power that came with them? And why does Chechnya remain the sole exception to a decades-long centralization that effectively rewrote the terms of the original bargain?
On the 15th of November 1917, Vladimir Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia. It formally granted minorities the right to self-determination. The offer was never sincere. It was designed to recruit minority groups into the Bolshevik cause during the Russian Civil War. Any attempt to actually claim independence was suppressed throughout the war. When the Soviet Union was formally created on the 30th of December 1922, these minorities were relegated to Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, known as ASSRs. These held less power than the union republics and were subordinate to them.
The borders of the new republics were drawn through a process called delimitation, guided by Joseph Stalin's theory on nationality. Early formations in Central Asia, the Kazakh ASSR and the Turkestan ASSR, were dissolved and reorganized into new union republics. Alongside this came the policy of indigenization, which pushed de-Russification and promoted minority languages and culture. Language and culture flourished, and ethnicity became institutionalized in the country's state apparatus. This policy was particularly enforced in ASSRs where indigenous people were already minorities in their own homelands, like the Buryat ASSR.
The Bolsheviks were nervous about what they had built. To prevent any republic from seeking genuine independence, they enclosed them deliberately within Russian territory. In 1925, the Bashkir ASSR lost its border with the future Kazakh SSR. This occurred through the creation of the so-called "Orenburg corridor," which enclosed the entire Volga region. On the 15th of July 1929, the Komi-Zyryan Autonomous Oblast lost access to the Barents Sea. It became an enclave before being upgraded to the Komi ASSR in 1936. The Karelian ASSR had been a union republic from 1940 before being downgraded. It was reformed as an ASSR on the 6th of July 1956. The number of ASSRs kept growing, even as the meaningful autonomy those designations represented continued to shrink.
From 1937, Soviet authorities classified "bourgeois nationalists" as enemies of the Russian people, a designation that ended the indigenization experiment. Russian became mandatory in all areas of non-Russian ethnicity. The Cyrillic script was made compulsory for every language in the Soviet Union. The constitutions of the ASSRs stated they could enforce their own internal policies. In practice, their titular nationalities were among those most targeted by Stalin's purges and were strictly controlled by Moscow.
On the 22nd of June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and the fate of the republics took a sharper turn. Stalin abolished the Volga German ASSR on the 7th of September 1941, exiling its entire population to Central Asia and Siberia. As Soviet forces began recapturing territory in 1943, Stalin accused several minority groups in southern Russia of collaborating with the Germans. Between 1943 and 1945, ethnic Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, and Kalmyks were deported en masse to remote parts of the country. The Soviet government then dissolved the republics these groups had called home. The Kalmyk ASSR was liquidated on the 27th of December 1943. The Crimean ASSR was dissolved on the 23rd of February 1944. The Checheno-Ingush ASSR was liquidated on the 7th of March 1944. The Kabardino-Balkar ASSR was renamed the Kabardian ASSR on the 8th of April 1944, stripped of its Balkar designation.
After Stalin's death on the 5th of March 1953, Nikita Khrushchev sought to rehabilitate his predecessor's victims. During his Secret Speech on the 25th of February 1956, Khrushchev formally rehabilitated Russia's minorities. The Kabardino-Balkar ASSR and the Checheno-Ingush ASSR were both restored on the 9th of January 1957. The Kalmyk ASSR followed on the 29th of July 1958. Two republics were not restored. The Volga German ASSR remained dissolved. The Crimean ASSR was instead transferred to the Ukrainian SSR on the 19th of February 1954. By the time the Soviet Union entered its final decade, Russians had been settling in the ASSRs for generations. In most of these regions, the populations that gave each republic its name had become minorities within their own nominal homelands.
From 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union and the Russian SFSR, led by Boris Yeltsin, were locked in a deepening power struggle. Yeltsin promised the ASSRs more devolved powers and pledged to build a federation "from the ground up." On the 12th of June 1990, the Russian SFSR declared itself a sovereign state whose laws took priority over Soviet ones. Throughout 1990 and 1991, most ASSRs issued their own declarations of sovereignty. These elevated their status to that of union republics within a federal Russia. Only the Dagestan ASSR and the Mordovian ASSR chose not to proclaim sovereignty.
The Soviet Union collapsed on the 26th of December 1991, and the position of the ASSRs suddenly became uncertain. Their declarations were divided on the question of secession. Some advocated the integrity of the Russian Federation; others were silent. The Komi ASSR, the Mari ASSR, and the Tuvan ASSR explicitly reserved the right to self-determination. The Checheno-Ingush ASSR, led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, declared independence on the 1st of November 1991. When the Tatar ASSR held a referendum on independence on the 21st of March 1992, Yeltsin had the ballot declared illegal by the Constitutional Court.
On the 31st of March 1992, every subject of Russia except the Tatar ASSR and the de facto state of Chechnya signed the Federation Treaty. The ASSRs were dissolved and became the modern republics. The autonomous oblasts of Adygea, Gorno-Altai, Khakassia, and Karachay-Cherkessia were elevated to full republic status. On the 4th of June 1992, the Republic of Ingushetia came into being. Its people had refused to join Dudayev's breakaway state and chose to rejoin Russia instead. Tatarstan held out for a separate deal. On the 15th of February 1994, Moscow and Kazan signed a power-sharing agreement granting the republic a high degree of autonomy. Forty-five other regions, including the other republics, would go on to sign their own autonomy agreements with the federal center. The Russian state of the 1990s had become a patchwork of competing legal arrangements.
After the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, a new constitution removed the "sovereign states" language that the republics had held. The bilateral agreements, however, remained in force. The asymmetry between republics and other federal subjects went deeper than a single word in a treaty.
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan gained the authority to conduct their own foreign relations and sign agreements with foreign governments. No krai or oblast held this right. Republics also had their own constitutions, official languages, and national anthems. Actual autonomy depended less on ethnic composition than on economic importance. Sakha, with its vast diamond deposits, could keep most of its revenue and sell its profits independently. North Ossetia, a poorer republic near the restive North Caucasus, was instead given greater control over defense and internal security.
Eduard Rossel, then governor of Sverdlovsk Oblast, attempted to transform his region into the Ural Republic on the 1st of July 1993. His goal was to access the same benefits held by the recognized republics. Yeltsin initially supported the move, then dissolved the Ural Republic and fired Rossel on the 9th of November 1993. Vologda Oblast declared its wish to become a "Vologda Republic" on the 14th of May 1993; Moscow ignored the declaration entirely. Proposals for other new republics were floated across Russia's regions. These included a "Pomor Republic" in Arkhangelsk Oblast and a "Neva Republic" in Saint Petersburg. None materialized. Boris Yeltsin made little effort to rein in republican laws that contradicted the constitution, preferring to trade tolerance for political loyalty. The arrangement held for the rest of his presidency, until the election of Vladimir Putin on the 26th of March 2000 changed the federal government's priorities entirely.
Putin's first act as president was the creation of federal districts on the 18th of May 2000. These were tasked with exerting federal control over all the country's subjects. The power-sharing agreements that had defined the 1990s began to expire or be terminated one by one. After 2003, only Tatarstan and Bashkortostan continued to negotiate extensions of their treaties. Bashkortostan's power-sharing treaty expired on the 7th of July 2005, leaving Tatarstan as the sole republic with a special arrangement. Tatarstan's agreement was renewed on the 11th of July 2007.
After Chechen separatists attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Putin abolished direct elections for governors and assumed the personal power to appoint and dismiss them. The influential leaders who had argued hardest for bilateral agreements, Mintimer Shaimiev of Tatarstan and Murtaza Rakhimov of Bashkortostan, were eventually dismissed. These dismissals removed the last vestiges of regional autonomy from the 1990s. The Kozak Commission, established by Putin in June 2001, had recommended minimizing the basis of regional autonomy and transferring powers to the federal government. The European Parliament ultimately concluded that Russia functions as a unitary state despite officially being a federation.
On the 29th of December 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev signed a law banning republic leaders from holding the title of president. Tatarstan resisted, remaining the only republic to keep the title. Putin later signed a law forcing Tatarstan to abolish it by June 2022. On the 19th of June 2018, a bill was passed elevating the status of the Russian language at the expense of other official languages. It authorized the abolition of mandatory minority language classes in schools and reduced voluntary teaching to two hours a week. On the 24th of July 2017, Tatarstan's power-sharing agreement with Moscow expired. It was the last republic to lose its special status. Some commentators concluded at that point that Russia had ceased to be a federation. Chechnya alone had been carved out of these reforms from the start. Its status as an exception was made explicit by Moscow's own concessions at the end of the Second Chechen War.
Yeltsin attempted to retake Chechnya on the 11th of December 1994, beginning the First Chechen War. Russian forces captured Grozny on the 8th of February 1995 and killed Dudayev months later in an airstrike. Faced with a demoralized army and near-universal public opposition, Yeltsin signed the Khasavyurt Accord with Chechnya on the 30th of August 1996. He then withdrew his troops. A year later, Russia and Chechnya signed the Moscow Peace Treaty. The fallout from the failed war, combined with a financial crisis in 1998, resulted in Yeltsin resigning on the 31st of December 1999. He designated Vladimir Putin as interim president and successor.
Chechnya's new president, Aslan Maskhadov, proved incapable of fixing the republic's devastated economy or maintaining order. The territory grew increasingly lawless, and extremists invaded neighboring Dagestan while bombing apartment blocks inside Russia. Putin sent troops back into Chechnya on the 1st of October 1999. Russian forces captured Grozny on the 6th of February 2000 and pushed rebels into the mountains. Moscow imposed direct rule on the 9th of June 2000. The territory was formally reintegrated as the Chechen Republic on the 24th of March 2003. The price of reintegration was an arrangement unlike any other republic's.
Putin's approach was called "Chechenization." He bought the loyalty of local elites and granted the republic the right to manage its own affairs outside of federal control. With the appointment of Ramzan Kadyrov to lead the republic in 2007, Chechnya's independence from Moscow grew further. Chechnya under Kadyrov functions outside of Russian law, runs its own independent security force, and conducts its own de facto foreign policy. The Russian government provides generous subsidies in exchange for loyalty and security. Observers have noted Putin's apparent reluctance to exert control over Kadyrov, fearing another conflict. Chechnya has come to be characterized as a "state within a state." The question of which territories count as Russian republics had already reached beyond Russia's recognized borders, starting with Crimea in March 2014.
On the 18th of March 2014, Russia annexed the Autonomous Republic of Crimea from Ukraine after a referendum. The peninsula became the Republic of Crimea, designated Russia's twenty-second republic. Ukraine and most of the international community refused to recognize the annexation. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262 declared the referendum invalid.
On the 24th of February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. By March of that year, leaders in the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic had expressed their wish to join Russia. After Ukrainian forces made gains in the east in September 2022, the two republics organized referendums on annexation. On the 30th of September 2022, Putin formally announced the annexation of both republics and two additional Ukrainian oblasts, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The European Union, the G7, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the annexations as a violation of the UN Charter.
After the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Russia secured and recognized the de facto independence of Abkhazia from Georgia. Abkhazia uses the Russian ruble, coordinates its foreign policy with Moscow, and most of its citizens hold Russian passports. Georgian officials have expressed concern that Russia intends to absorb the region. On the 25th of November 2014, Abkhazia signed a treaty integrating its economy and military with Russia. A follow-up agreement on the 12th of November 2020 expanded that integration, drawing criticism within Abkhazia for risking the territory's sovereignty. The proposal to join Russia formally has little support among Abkhazia's political elite or the general public.
On the 19th of January 1992, a referendum in South Ossetia reportedly recorded 99.9% support for independence. A second question on unification with Russia reportedly drew the same figure. Officials in both South Ossetia and Russia have repeatedly expressed support for integration. On the 18th of March 2015, South Ossetia signed a treaty integrating its economy and military with Russia, identical to Abkhazia's of 2014. On the 9th of April 2017, South Ossetia held a referendum on renaming itself the "Republic of South Ossetia - The State of Alania." The new name was designed to mirror North Ossetia, implying future unification. On the 30th of March 2022, South Ossetia's government announced renewed attempts to hold a referendum on annexation. Outgoing president Anatoly Bibilov signed a decree authorizing the vote by the 17th of July 2022. His successor, Alan Gagloyev, scrapped it, saying a signal from Russia was needed first.
Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova, has sought to rejoin Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a 2006 referendum, an overwhelming majority reportedly voted for accession, though the results could not be independently confirmed. Russia has consistently ignored these appeals. Over 200,000 of Transnistria's citizens hold Russian passports. Russia provides gas at bargain prices, pays residents' pensions, and funds infrastructure projects in the region. A Russian military garrison operates there as a nominal peacekeeping force. Moldova insists on the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the region. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian general stated plans to create a land bridge connecting to Transnistria. The region has also suffered significant trade losses from the invasion and has grown more reliant on trade with the European Union. Sovereignty remains the most contested promise the federation has ever made. Lenin first invoked it on the 15th of November 1917 as a recruiting tool. The gap between that promise and its practice has never fully closed.
Common questions
What are the republics of Russia and how many are there?
Russia has twenty-one internationally recognized republics, each created as a national homeland for an ethnic minority called the titular nationality. A twenty-second republic, Crimea, is under Russian control but is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.
When were the republics of Russia created?
The modern republics were established with the Federation Treaty on the 31st of March 1992, which dissolved the Soviet-era Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. Their origins trace to Vladimir Lenin's Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia on the 15th of November 1917, which promised minorities the right to self-determination.
What rights do the republics of Russia have that other federal subjects do not?
The republics of Russia have the right to establish their own official languages, maintain their own constitutions, and have national anthems, rights not granted to krais and oblasts. During the 1990s, bilateral treaties also gave some republics control over natural resources and foreign relations; Tatarstan and Bashkortostan were permitted to conduct their own foreign relations and sign agreements with foreign governments.
Why did the republics of Russia lose their autonomy under Vladimir Putin?
Putin's centralization reforms began with the creation of federal districts on the 18th of May 2000 and continued through the gradual expiry and termination of the bilateral power-sharing agreements negotiated in the 1990s. The last such agreement, held by Tatarstan, expired on the 24th of July 2017. After that point, some commentators concluded that Russia had ceased to function as a federation.
What is the status of Chechnya within the Russian Federation?
Chechnya was formally reintegrated as the Chechen Republic on the 24th of March 2003 following the Second Chechen War, but operates with broad autonomy under Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin appointed in 2007. The republic runs its own security forces, conducts its own de facto foreign policy, and receives generous federal subsidies; observers characterize it as a state within a state.
What happened to Russia's autonomous republics during the Stalin era?
Stalin reversed the earlier policy of indigenization in the 1930s, making Russian mandatory across non-Russian areas and purging minority leaders from government. Between 1943 and 1945, ethnic Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, and Kalmyks were deported en masse, and the Soviet government dissolved their republics. Khrushchev rehabilitated the deported peoples after Stalin's death on the 5th of March 1953, restoring most but not all of the dissolved republics.
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