Minimum SSR population

Vuu

Banned
I remember stumbling upon an information that during some sort of reorganization of the USSR, what ethnicity would get it's own republic was determined by the number of population, and that Estonia (i think) at the time was barely under the limit, but Stalin decided to give them an SSR anyway, since they would soon grow to enough number. Is this true, and if it is, what was that number?
 
I would assume the million mark ..
the issue with Estonia and Baltic states is they were absorbed and left to have some form of political / historical difference to keep the populations quiet
 

Vuu

Banned
I don't remember, but think that it was less than a million

I think easiest to figure out is to find post-ww2 census data
 
I remember stumbling upon an information that during some sort of reorganization of the USSR, what ethnicity would get it's own republic was determined by the number of population, and that Estonia (i think) at the time was barely under the limit, but Stalin decided to give them an SSR anyway, since they would soon grow to enough number. Is this true, and if it is, what was that number?

Stalin once claimed that only Republics situated on the border of the USSR could become SSRs, because every SSR had the right to secede, and would only be able to use this right if it wouldn't be surrounded by other SSRs after the secession.

But actually, whether a Soviet state would be considered as an SSR or an ASSR wasn't determined by population or some other stable standard, but by pragmatic, political considerations. The Baltic states probably became SSRs to give the world the impression that they would still be sovereign nations within the federal USSR. Karelia was an SSR for a certain period of time, but this status was later revoked, even if Karelia's population numbers didn't significantly drop or rise in the period.
 
I got the source for Stalin's claim:

3. Then there is a proposal that we add a new article to Chapter II of the Draft Constitution, to the following effect : that on reaching the proper level of economic and cultural development Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics may be raised to the status of Union Soviet Socialist Republics. Can this proposal be adopted? I think that it should not be adopted. It is a wrong proposal, not only because of its content, but also because of the condition it lays down, Economic and cultural maturity can no more be urged as grounds for transferring Autonomous Republics to the category of Union Republics than economic or cultural backwardness can be urged as grounds for leaving any particular republic in the list of Autonomous Republics. This would not be a Marxist, not a Leninist approach. The Tatar Republic, for example, remains an Autonomous Republic, while the Kazakh Republic is to become a Union Republic; but this does not mean that from the standpoint of cultural and economic development the Kazakh Republic is on a higher level than the Tatar Republic. The very opposite is the case. The same can be said, for example, of the Volga German Autonomous Republic and the Kirghiz Union Republic, of which the former is on a higher cultural and economic level than the latter, although it remains an Autonomous Republic.

What are the grounds for transferring Autonomous Republics to the category of Union Republics?

There are three such grounds.

First, the republic concerned must be a border republic, not surrounded on all sides by U.S.S.R. territory. Why? Because since the Union Republics have the right to secede from the U.S.S.R., a republic, on becoming a Union Republic, must be in a position logically and actually to raise the question of secession from the U.S.S.R. And this question can be raised only by a republic which, say, borders on some foreign state, and, consequently, is not surrounded on all sides by U.S.S.R. territory. Of course, none of our republics would actually raise the question of seceding from the U.S.S.R. But since the right to secede from the U.S.S.R. is reserved to the Union Republics, it must be so arranged that this right does not become a meaningless scrap of paper. Take, for example, the Bashkir Republic or the Tatar Republic. Let us assume that these Autonomous Republics are transferred to the category of Union Republics. Could they logically and actually raise the question of seceding from the U.S.S.R.? No, they could not. Why? Because they are surrounded on all sides by Soviet republics and regions, and, strictly speaking, they have nowhere to go if they secede from the U.S.S.R. (Laughter and applause.) Therefore, it would be wrong to transfer such republics to the category of Union Republics.

Secondly, the nationality which gives its name to a given Soviet republic must constitute a more or less compact majority within that republic. Take the Crimean Autonomous Republic, for example. It is a border republic, but the Crimean Tatars do not constitute the majority in that republic; on the contrary, they are a minority. Consequently, it would be wrong to transfer the Crimean Republic to the category of Union Republics.

Thirdly, the republic must not have too small a population; it should have a population of, say, not less but more than a million, at least. Why? Because it would be wrong to assume that a small Soviet republic with a very small population and a small army could hope to maintain its existence as an independent state. There can hardly be any doubt that the imperialist beasts of prey would soon lay hands on it. I think that unless these three objective grounds exist, it would be wrong at the present historical moment to raise the question of transferring any particular Autonomous Republic to the category of Union Republics.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm

So these were, at least according to Stalin, the features an ASSR needed to become a SSR. Though his argumentation seems to be pretty sound, I would still argue that these were only guidelines (not even enshrined in the Soviet constitution), and that the borders of the USSR's internal divisions were, on the one hand, the product of "tradition" (from the turbulent years after the October Revolution), and on the other hand always subject to arbitrary change ordered by the party leadership.
 
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Karelia was an SSR for a certain period of time, but this status was later revoked, even if Karelia's population numbers didn't significantly drop or rise in the period.
This was largely because the Soviet leadership accepted the fact that Finland would not be incorporated directly to Soviet Union, and the Karelo-Finnish SSR that had been originally created specifically to act as "Red Piedmonte of Finland" was annexed to USSR.
 
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