What if Siberia dissolved?

It's 1991 and the Soviet Union falls. Central Asia and the Eastern Bloc separate from Russia. But what if Siberia dissolved, too? I know that might sound stupid (who wants to live in Siberia anyway,) but what if Russia lost all its Eastern holdings and the Siberian states governed themselves. Is that even possible?
 
With a POD of 1991? No. The reason the others states separated from Russia is because they were of a different ethnicity, and thus wanted to be their own state. The vast majority of Siberians are Russian, and there's no reason for them to split.
 
You are going to need a much earlier POD for that to happen. I asked a similar question (how to make the RSFSR fragment, not just Siberia), and the answer would require some ASSRs to become SSRs, as well as a majority population that doesn't identify as Russians. The absolute most you can split off in Siberia is Tuva, which is overwhelmingly Tuvan with a distinctly Turko-Mongol culture, and remote and worthless enough to allow the Kremlin to ignore or even forget it exists. Yakutia comes a distant second, but with mineral reserves and an economic base utterly tied to Moscow, it's pretty difficult to split it away. Everywhere else and you'll have mobs of Russians taking over the building of any local government that threatens to secede.
 
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Since Siberia wasn't an SSR, Russia would have been within its rights to put down a secession. It was easily strong enough to do that for all of the problems it had in 1991. So there's a legal prerequisite of creating a Siberian SSR, preferably before 1991.

If that's done, would going it alone be attractive? Siberia has lots of natural resources and a small population, which cries out for an outside protector. Russia is still the most obvious choice for ethnic and geographic reasons unless things get really bad in European Russia. If that happens, it's not likely to be much better in independent Siberia where the other Soviet breakaways, China, whatever factions arise in Russia proper and the Russian mob all try to manipulate events to their advantage.
 
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If that's done, would going it alone be attractive? Siberia has lots of natural resources and a small population, which cries out for an outside protector. Russia is still the most obvious choice for ethnic and geographic reasons unless things get really bad in European Russia. If that happens, it's not likely to be much better in independent Siberia where the other Soviet breakaways, China, whatever factions arise in Russia proper and the Russian mob all try to manipulate events to their advantage.

Some of the border regions are becoming dominated by Chinese laborers and businessmen. A US journalist who toured Siberia a decade ago described the character of one border city as nearly "Chinese" . Hypothetically if that trend developed then Siberia might trend towards becoming a north China region.
 
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