In the years
immediately following the Soviet collapse, Russia found it
particularly difficult to reestablish the primacy of its own central
authority. Conflicts between the regional governments and the
Russian federal authorities over the spheres of rights and powers
were substantial. They even led some analysts to debate the question
of whether Russia itself was in danger of splitting apart.
However, the
demographic differences between the former USSR and the present-day
Russia make the prospect of Russia sharing the fate of the USSR
unlikely. The Soviet population was more ethnically fragmented than
that of the Russian republic. Whereas only half of the Soviet
population was ethnically Russian, Russia’s population is 81 percent
Russian with ethnic minorities forming a very small proportion of
the total.
Besides, the
national republics of the Soviet Union were all located on the
perimeter of the union, and thus bordered other countries. The
national territories of Russia are mainly internal to the Russian
republic, and thus have less direct interaction with the outside
world.
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