Pre-Reading Notes

Welcome to Chapter 3: Russia! This chapter is a bit different than most because it focuses on just one country – Russia! So why is Russia presented as a region unto itself? Well, first of all, I think it’s important to note that the world’s regions are very much vernacular. I remember when I was an undergraduate geography student, I learned that there were 14 regions of the world – because that’s how many chapters were in my textbook (excluding the introductory chapter.) It wasn’t until I became a college instructor that I realized, wait a second… 15 chapters… 15 weeks in a typical college semester… that seems like quite a coincidence… So the truth is, the notion of “world regions” is just a convenient way to break up the world’s countries into manageable chunks and rarely do textbook authors agree on how it should be divided.

I decided to set Russia aside as its own region because it has a distinctive history that’s quite different from that of Western Europe, it has a distinctive cultural landscape, and also its size, both in terms of its actual physical area but also the magnitude of influence this country has had on the surrounding area. If you were writing a geography textbook, you might choose to include some of the countries of Eastern Europe in this chapter, or maybe some of the countries of Western Asia, and that would be completely reasonable. Think of our regions very much as chapters in a larger story rather than clearly divided entities.

Because this chapter focuses just on one country, it has a bit more specifics and details than other chapters, but as usual, remind yourself to zoom out and pay attention to the big picture.

The core focus of this chapter is ethnicity. And you might ask yourself, “Well, this is Russia, isn’t it? Aren’t they just all… Russian?” Certainly a majority of people in Russia consider themselves Russian in terms of ethnicity, but there are actually a wide variety of different ethnic groups here – and also clusters of ethnic Russians outside of Russia as well. In this chapter, you’ll learn why that is and what impact that has on the geography of the region today.

The learning objectives for Chapter 3, and questions you might consider, are:

• Identify the key geographic features of Russia
  • What are the most prominent physical features of the Russian landscape?
  • How would you describe Russia’s climate, and what effect does it have on the human geography of Russia?
• Analyze how the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union approached the issue of ethnic identity
  • How did the Russian Empire approach ethnic identity, and how did this approach differ from that of the Soviet government?
• Describe the current areas of ethnic conflict within Russia
  • Where are there areas of ethnic conflict within Russia?
• Explain how Russian history impacted its modern-day geographic landscape
  • When looking at Russia today, how did the Russian Empire’s attitude toward ethnic minorities and the later Soviet government approach impact the geographic landscape? (Consider areas outside of Russia as well.)
  • How did the Soviet economic system impact modern Russia?

You might also consider connecting this chapter to the previous one in terms of nationalism. Think about how a Russian or Soviet national identity developed, and what impact this had on ethnic minorities.

Don’t forget to add your own review questions to this list as you read the chapter!

Notes After Reading

Okay, so you’ve read Chapter 3 and learned a great deal about Russia’s history and its approach to ethnic minorities. Nice work!

I find students are often very confused about the whole Crimea situation, so let’s unpack that a bit because it’s a great example of a larger issue related to ethnic tension in and around Russia. So first of all, where is Ukraine?

There it is! (Side note: You know you’re a geographer when you look at a picture of a country and think, “Look how cute it is!” But seriously, look how cute! It looks like it’s nibbling on Moldova. Nom nom nom.) (Another side note, if you ever need to memorize countries, I find it’s much easier if you imagine them doing or wearing silly things. For example, Croatia is taking a bite out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Cameroon looks a bit like a rooster. But, I digress.)

Okay, so just looking at the map, what do we know about Ukraine? What’s the country to the east of it? Russia, right? Well done. It’s also on the water (the Black Sea, more specifically.) It’s got a peninsula thing that’s striped for some reason (we’ll get back to that.) It’s got a bunch of other countries to the west of it. So knowing very little else, just looking at the map, we actually can get quite a lot of information.

Let’s get back to that stripey bit. That is Crimea. Here, we’ll zoom in:

So the textbook gives you the history of this region and I don’t want to rehash it here, but the key point to understand is that Ukraine has a sizeable Russian population and Crimea in particular is largely Russian in terms of ethnic identity. Go back to the Ukraine map for a moment and ask yourself, “Where would people who identify as Russian be more likely to live? In the east or in the west?” Take a moment and think about it.

If you look at Ukraine, most Russians in Ukraine would likely live near… Russia, right? In the east. Whereas most non-Russians, primarily ethnic Ukranians, would live in the west. Make sense?

The challenge in Russia is that you have these two clusters of ethnic identities but you also have a tension between Europe and Russia more broadly. So the European Union wants greater influence and trade while at the same time, Russia wants more influence and trade and economic development and so on. And so you have Ukraine kind of stuck in the middle, and more precisely, people in Ukraine stuck in the middle and differing on who the government should be aligned and partnered with. This all came to a head in Crimea in 2014, which again you read about in the text.

Where does the situation stand today? It depends on who you ask (hence the striped lines in the map indicating a disputed territory.) Some countries, primarily the United States and the countries of Western Europe, view Russia as illegally annexing Crimea. (They see it as akin to Mexico being like, “We’re going to go ahead and take Texas.” It’s kind of against the rules.) Russia argues that Crimeans don’t want to be part of Ukraine and so they are simply aligning with the people of Crimea’s desire to be autonomous. (They might see it as similar to supporting the American colonies in securing independence.) And Ukraine is in the middle of it viewing a Russian presence in their country as a violation of international law. So it’s complicated – and solving this situation is just as complicated. What would you do? Kick out Russia? Allow Crimeans to decide? Think about what precedents might set – and what international tensions your solution might raise.

When you finish up this chapter, go back to the learning objectives for the chapter and the questions you created and use them to test yourself!