Answers: Autonomous and breakaway regions of the former Soviet Union
1) While Lithuania was the first of the Republics to declare its independence from the Soviet Union in March 1990, an Autonomous Republic preceded it by two months. Name the region and the country it is now part of.
Nakhchivan, an Autonomous Republic that’s part of Azerbaijan, but surrounded by Armenia, Turkey and Iran. Turkey and Azerbaijan have been holding military exercises there recently.
Nakhchivan had a minority Armenian population and Armenian and Azeri forces fought for control after the First World War. The Soviet Union attached it to Azerbaijan and this was cemented by the Treaty of Kars in 1921 which defined the border between the USSR and Turkey. That treaty also granted Turkey the status of guarantor of Nakhchivan’s territorial integrity.
October 2023 update: Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey are calling for a ‘Zangezur Corridor’ to connect Nakhchivan with the rest of Azerbaijan, after Baku seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenians in September. But any corridor has to go via Armenia. Yerevan has objected, saying a corridor without Armenian checkpoints would undermine its sovereignty. More on the Turkish perspective here. More here, here and here. Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan is uneasy about such a move.
2) X was President of a former Soviet Republic from 1993 to 2003 during which time he initiated a major oil deal. He had been the Republic’s Communist Party boss in the Soviet era only to be sidelined by Mikhail Gorbachev. He returned to the limelight in his home turf, the Autonomous Republic in Question 1. He led that exclave from 1991 to 1993, making it effectively independent from the country it was now part of. Following a spell of political instability and conflict, he took power in the main capital in 1993. Who?
Heydar Aliyev, a native of Nakhchivan, who was President of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003. His son Ilham Aliyev is currently in power. The 1994 deal between oil majors and Azerbaijan to exploit reserves in the Caspian Sea was described at the time as the ‘Contract of the Century’. It marked a return to the oil boom days dating back to the late 19th century and early 20th century, when Azerbaijan pumped half the world’s oil, topping the U.S.
3) In August 1990 amid a power struggle with Mikhail Gorbachev in a crumbling Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin visited the capital of an Autonomous Republic and exhorted Russia's regions to "grab as much sovereignty as you can swallow”. Later that month, this region adopted a sovereignty declaration. In 1992 the region in a referendum overwhelmingly voted for the premise that it is a ‘sovereign state’ and a ‘subject of international law’, over the objections of Yeltsin, now in charge of Russia. A 1994 compromise allowed the region autonomy not enjoyed in any other republic, covering laws, taxes, extraction of natural resources, political and economic ties with foreign states and even citizenship. This was allowed to lapse in the Putin era in 2017. Where?
Tatarstan. More here, here and here from the 1990s. Recent developments here and here. More on the language tussles involving Tatar and Russian here.
4) In the early nineties, two regions broke away from newly-independent Georgia after a period of conflict. One was South Ossetia, which was the main theatre of the brief war between Georgia and Russia in 2008. Name the other region? (Soon after the 2008 conflict Moscow formally recognised their independence)
5) Akhmad __________was made supreme mufti of an Autonomous Republic in 1995 and proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against Russia that year. He was part of a deal with Moscow in 1996 that gave favourable terms to the region. When the next conflict erupted in 1999, he switched sides and was made President. He was assassinated by separatists in 2004. Who and where?
Akhmad Kadyrov, Chechnya. His son Ramzan Kadyrov has been in charge of Chechnya since 2007.
6) Adjoining regions A and B, both Muslim-majority, belonged to a single Autonomous Republic during the Soviet era. A declared independence in 1991 while B in a referendum opted to stay part of the Russian Federation. A and B have a history of border disputes and A has been accused of trying to grab land from B. Name A and B.
A is Chechnya and B Ingushetia.
7) Oil and gold tycoon Suleiman Kerimov (named Russia’s richest man by Forbes this year) bought Anzhi Makhachkala, a football club in his native region in 2011. He went on a buying spree, acquiring four Brazilians including Roberto Carlos and then a big name from Inter Milan in one of the biggest transfer deals that year. This player became the highest-paid footballer in the world at the time. Name the then most expensive player and the Republic he played in, which has been battling separatism. (Despite the big signings including manager Guus Hiddink the club faltered two years later as Kerimov pulled the plug on spending and sold the club)
Samuel Eto’o and Dagestan. More on the rise and fall of Anzhi Makhachkala here. Suleiman Kerimov controls Russia’s biggest gold producer but has been subjected to U.S. sanctions.
8) Region X was part of Republic Y in the Soviet era. As the Soviet Union crumbled, Y which was on its way to independence removed Russian as an official language. That angered people in X, which had a large number of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. X declared independence in September 1990 from Y, even as Y was expanding ties with country Z on its west, with which it shared cultural and linguistic ties (Y and Z were one country between WWI and WWII). X and Y went to war in 1992. After Russia brokered a ceasefire the two sides have been in a state of frozen conflict. Name X, Y and Z.
X is Transnistria (also spelt Transdniestria or Trans-Dniester). Transnistria held an unrecognised referendum in 2006 in which voters overwhelmingly opted for a merger with Russia.
Y is Moldova and Z is Romania. More on the cultural and linguistic ties between the two here, here, here and here.
9) This breakaway region held a referendum in 2017 (not recognised internationally) changing its name to the Republic of Artsakh. How do we know it?
Nagorno-Karabakh. Explainer on the long-running conflict here.
October 2023 update: Nagorno-Karabakh was seized by Azerbaijan in a lightning offensive in September. Most of its ethnic Armenian residents have fled for Armenia. More here and here.
10) The Republic of Kalmykia in southwestern Russia near the Caspian Sea is the only part of Europe dominated by followers of which religion?
11) Kalmykia was headed by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from 1993 to 2010, who once claimed he had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard their spaceship. Ilyumzhinov was in Iraq in 2003 meeting Saddam Hussein and his son Uday just before the U.S.-led attacks began. In 2011 he was in the Libyan capital with Muammar Gaddafi during the dictator’s final months.
Ilyumzhinov is also known for heading an international sports body from 1995 to 2018 and fending off electoral challenges from former world champion A in 2010 and former world champion B in 2014 (with help from Russian diplomacy). A and B, bitter rivals in their playing days, united in 2010 but were no match for Ilyumzhinov. Finally American sanctions for ‘materially assisting’ another dictator brought his long tenure to an end in 2018.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the longtime head of the World Chess Federation known by its French acronym FIDE. He defeated Anatoly Karpov in 2010 and Garry Kasparov in 2014. More on the politics of chess here. More on Ilyumzhinov’s Baghdad visit in 2003 here and his game of chess with Gaddafi in Tripoli here. There’s also Chess City in the regional capital Elista, which has hosted several chess tournaments.
12) This region was made an Autonomous Republic by the Soviet Union in 1921. A major indigenous group there was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and deported en masse to Central Asia by Stalin. The region’s autonomous status was taken away and in 1954 it was transferred from the Russian Soviet Republic to another Republic, despite it having a Russian-speaking majority, in what was widely called a gift by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Name the region, the community that was exiled and the Republic that took control of the region in 1954.
Crimea. Crimean Tatars were exiled en masse by Stalin and began to return only in the 1980s. Under Nikita Khrushchev the Soviet Union transferred control of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Russia annexed the region in 2014.