Due to Russia's massive expanse of territory and cultures ranging from European to Slavic to Middle Eastern to Asian, it seems like Russia should have split into various states. Why has this not happened? How has Russia managed to keep their hold on so much land and so many cultures without fracturing?
EDIT: Wow, awesome answers and great discussions going on. Learning a ton. Historians rock.
Well it has kind of happened, the break up of the soviet union made the Russian borders retreat from Poland east to the modern borders. they also lost countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan down in Asia. Muscovy (Moscow area of Russia) which was the leading power that became Russia really started expanding when it annexed Novgorod (north western Russia) eventually this Muscovy expanded. most of the Ural mountain Russians share fairly similar cultures so that is easily maintained them within the empire. Muscovy wasn't really referred to as Russia until some time in the late 1500s which at that point it controlled from the polish empire to the Ural mountains. it was around this time 1500-1600s that Russia conquered Siberia which makes up the bulk of what we call Russia. Russia didn't reach its pre-soviet borders until the 1890s with the majority of the Islamic/non-Siberian Asia joining in the 1800s. this meant that the control over this region was fairly new. Here is a good map of the expansion of Russia
As for why Russia we know hasn't broken up it has to do with the fact that outside the Urals and south west Russia it is very sparsely populated. this means that Russia doesn't need much military power to control that region Here is a map of the population density of Russia it shows that Russia really is empty past the Urals.
But there has really been splintering of the russian empire especially post soviet. this map allows you to compare the Russian empire at the start of WW1 in Europe to it now. As you can see Russia lost a big part of its European control. however before the soviet breakup the soviet union was a very strong government commanding a strong military meaning that any nation that wanted to break out of them was in for a tough battle. but even today Russia has its unstable parts. I don't know if I'm really allowed to go into that because it is past the threshold of what this subreddit allows as history but look at Chechnya. it is an Islamic area of Russia that has been trying to gain independence since the break up of the soviet union and still is unstable today.
I hope this helps you understand it a little better.
Russia of 100 years ago was very different territorial than the Russia today. It has lost the Baltics, eastern Poland, White Russia, all of Central Asia and the Caucuses, Ukraine, parts of Mongolia, and so on.
In these cases exactly what you describe happened. The cultural and ethnic sectarianism caused them to fracture. The Russia of today is more ethnically stable (though diverse) save the ever-troublesome Caucuses. A lot of this stability was achieved via mass genocide/population transfers under Stalin, which effectively weakened minorities to the point of being unable to resist Russia in the future or maintain their identity. The Crimean Tatars, Don Cossacks, Ingush, and Koreans are good examples of this.
What do you mean from European to Slavic (Slavs are European)?
why did the Crimea leave with Ukraine?
Caspian Report on Youtube provides a great geopolitical breakdown here.
Basically, it boil down to a nation naturally expanding to its most defensible geographic boundaries, the weakest being the Northern European Plain where Russia has been successfully invaded a few times from (WWII, WWI, Napoleon, Poland, etc.)
People aren't really answering the question
Russia was able to maintain its form (more or less) because when it was expanding, it colonized those areas with its own ethnic groups. These ethnic groups are different enough from those across the political border so that they dont feel that separating would be to their benefit. Meaning, russians werent tempted to join estonia, or china, or ukraine because they had closer ties with moscow.
Throw in geopolitical forces, a determined central government with the emphasis on central authority, and the power of the orthodox church, and its hard for russia to split up due to external pressures.
Fun fact - russia has only really dissolved twice - and both were caused by invasions from the east (mongols and the white army during 1917).
