After reading the FAQ about the breakup of the USSR, I am still very curious as to why the Russian military willingly gave up areas that had been historically Russian for some decades before the Soviet Union. At the time of the fall of the USSR, they were pressured to give up the Warsaw Pact and allow some breakaway areas (Baltic countries) away, but (afaik) there wasn't too much pressure to give up what was historically Russia.
Given this, why did the Russian military at the time allow many areas that were historically part of Russia become independent? It seems that this action was a pointless loss that the international community had no say in.
Thanks!.
We always need to keep in mind that Central Asia, the Baltic Republics, and the Warsaw Pact Countries (though some might have been in some sense 'historically Russian'), were not at the time of the collapse of the USSR officially subordinated to Russia per se.
So, leaving aside the Warsaw Pact countries (many of which were not actually ever part of the Russian Empire), the structure of the USSR did not officially subordinate any of the now-independent republics to Russia. The USSR was composed of several 'freely-associating' Republics, the signatories to the constitution of the USSR. These Union Republics included the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs, the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian SSRs, and of course the SSRs in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Though it was certainly the case that the leadership of the USSR proper contained a significant proportion of Russians--certain powerful individuals like Stalin were non-Russian, but he at least certainly presented himself as a Russian by the end of his life--it was not officially 'Russian'. Its military was not Russian but Soviet, and as a government it was supposed to provide not just for Russians but for all Soviet citizens. The Russian Federation, though it is sort of a primary successor state to the USSR (retaining the UN security council seat, for instance), established early on that territorially it would retain the boundaries of the RSFSR.
Though much of Central Asia was part of the Russian Empire, since the formation of the USSR the region was formally divorced from the RSFSR, and so 'reclaiming' it was not simple, and would rely on a claim dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.