[Russia WI] - Alternative Ethnostates in "Russia"?

See above. What alternative cultures, ethnic groups or tribes could carved out notable states in Russian Europe, perhaps coexisting together in a multitude of polities?
 
So many names are available for the Caucasus / Volga region. Could some of them have filtered further west into the Russian heartlands?
Well, there is Ingria and there are Vepsians. A part of Sápmi extends into Russia, covering the Skolt, Kildin and Ter Sami. But these are so small so I'm not sure how likely it is that they'd get their own ethnic states, especially the Samis considering how small those minorities are.

There was also a Novgorodian and Pskov republic in the past. So if one manages to keep Novgorodians and Pskovians from getting Russified/Muscovized we could call those seperate ethnicities, but this requires a timeline so far back it creates butterflies like crazy. Alternatively, one could just try and create some neo-Novgorodian/Pskovian ethnicity to try and seperate the Russians there from the 'other Russians'.

If we really want to play around, there's Sloboda Ukraine if one wants to play with an ethnic Ukrainian state within the Russian Federation.

Basically everything I just said and suggested is ASB like crazy, but I'm also a sucker for maps so here you go:

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If the Turkic Peoples had ridden north rather than south into Persia and Anatolia, I could easily see them overcoming the infant Slavic states early on and settling themselves in the region, intermarrying with and eventually subsuming the locals into their culture. A "Tarto-Slavic" ethnic group; probably with a more heavily Scandinavian/Germanic influnced culture than the Greek and Arabic influences that hit the Turkish people IOTL, combined with the Steppe traditions, would make for an interesting combination.
 
The possibilities are practically endless considering all the ethnic groups that passed through: Bulgars, Cumans, Pechenegs, Magyars, just to name a few.
 

Vuu

Banned
Difficult - the terrain is such that it encourages large states that will assimilate all smaller cultures
 
See above. What alternative cultures, ethnic groups or tribes could carved out notable states in Russian Europe, perhaps coexisting together in a multitude of polities?
If the Slavs never end up pushing north and assimilating the various Baltic tribes which lived up to the reaches of OTL Moscow, you could have a Baltic speaking nation in Belarus and parts of Western Russia. It probably wouldn't extend anywhere near as far as OTL Russia, though.
 
Tatars seem easiest, given how much of the region they controlled historically. It's just a matter of uniting the various Khanates (Crimea, Khazan, Sibir, Astrakhan, etc) and keeping the Rus divided so that they can be dominated and assimilated.
 
If the Turkic Peoples had ridden north rather than south into Persia and Anatolia, I could easily see them overcoming the infant Slavic states early on and settling themselves in the region, intermarrying with and eventually subsuming the locals into their culture. A "Tarto-Slavic" ethnic group; probably with a more heavily Scandinavian/Germanic influnced culture than the Greek and Arabic influences that hit the Turkish people IOTL, combined with the Steppe traditions, would make for an interesting combination.

Would this hypothetical group of northward-traveling Turks convert to the Christianity of the natives, or introduce Islam?
 
If the Turkic Peoples had ridden north rather than south into Persia and Anatolia, I could easily see them overcoming the infant Slavic states early on and settling themselves in the region, intermarrying with and eventually subsuming the locals into their culture. A "Tarto-Slavic" ethnic group; probably with a more heavily Scandinavian/Germanic influnced culture than the Greek and Arabic influences that hit the Turkish people IOTL, combined with the Steppe traditions, would make for an interesting combination.
Turkic peoples did ride north and settle down, creating Volga Bulgaria.

If this happened further to the west, the Bulgars who settled in the East Slavic areas would probably be Slavicized, much like the Bulgarians of the Balkans.
 
Is there anyway that the Volga Germans could form a state or for a North East Asian people (Manchurians, Ainu, Koreans, Tungusics, Mongolians) to form a state around modern Vladivostok and Kamchatka peninsula?
 
Is there anyway that the Volga Germans could form a state or for a North East Asian people (Manchurians, Ainu, Koreans, Tungusics, Mongolians) to form a state around modern Vladivostok and Kamchatka peninsula?
I don't think Volga Germans have too great a chance to create a state in that area, I'd wager Manchurians or Koreans would have a better chance of taking that area.

Ukrainians actually managed to carve out a state during the Russian civil war, see Green Ukraine.
 
Difficult - the terrain is such that it encourages large states that will assimilate all smaller cultures

If this was so true, Russification would have made ethnic groups like Volga Finns, Chuvashes, Tatars, Bashkirs and Caucasian peoples go extinct well before the mid 1950s, which was when they stopped being a majority in their regions iOTL. And people like Ukrainians, Baltic peoples or Turkic peoples, which have no major geographic boundaries between them and Russia, would have been fully assimilated.

Geographical determinism is overrated. Much like the Central European Plain was never fully occupied by a single ethnic group, a sufficiently old POD could lead to a very diverse Eurasian Steppe and Volga Basin at the very least.
 
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